UC-NRLF 


B    M    IDb    7MS 


1YGIENE  SERIES 


GOOD 
HEALTH 


BY  FRANCES  GULICK  JEWETT   | 


THE    GULICK    HYGIENE   SERIES 

BY 

LUTHER  HALSEY  GULICK,  M.D. 


THE    GULICK    HYGIENE    SERIES 

BOOK  ONE 

GOOD  HEALTH 

BY 
FRANCES  GULICK  JEWETT 


GINN    &   COMPANY 

BOSTON   •  NEW  YORK   .  CHICAGO   .  LONDON 


COPYRIGHT,  1906,  BY   LUTHER   H.  GULICK 

ENTERED  AT  STATIONERS*  HALL 

ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED 

A  910.3 


THE 
GULICK  HYGIENE  SERIES 

FIVE-BOOK  SERIES 
Book     I.     Good  Health.     40  cents 
Book     II.     Emergencies.     40  cents 
Book    HI.     Town  and  City.     50  cents 
Book  IV.    The  Body  at  Work.     50  cents 
Book   V.     Control  of  Body  and  Mind.     50  cents 

TWO-BOOK  SERIES 
Good  Health.     40 'cents 
The  Body  and  its  Defenses.     65  cents 


JDrcss 


GINN  AND  COMPANY  •  PRO- 
PRIETORS •  BOSTON  •  U.S.A. 


INTRODUCTION 

In  planning  a  series  of  text-books  for  elementary 
school  use  I  have  borne  in  mind  the  fact  that  the  main 
object  of  physiological  instruction  should  be  to  aid  in 
the  establishment  of  good  hygienic  habits.  I  have  also 
remembered  that  habits  are  more  often  established  in 
the  individual  by  social  custom  and  wont,  by  example 
and  precept,  than  by  logic  and  reason. 

It  is  recognized  that  mere  knowledge  of  an  intellec- 
tual character  is  ineffective.  We  all  know  much  better 
than  we  do.  Only  that  knowledge  is  effective  which  is 
related  to  doing,  —  knowledge  which  we  actually  put 
into  practice.  The  effect  of  knowledge  upon  action  is 
an  important,  even  if  not  the  ultimate,  criterion  of  its 
value.  It  is  relatively  useless  to  teach  children  about 
the  body,  unless  the  teaching  is  done  in  such  a  way  as 
to  lead  them  to  desire  to  form  their  lives  accordingly. 

The  purpose  of  this  series,  then,  is  to  introduce  that 
atmosphere,  both  of  intellectual  comprehension  and  of 
social  custom,  which  shall  result  in  the  unconscious  as 
well  as  the  conscious  development  of  wholesome  hygienic 
habits.  In  order  to  so  arrest  the  attention  that  convic- 
tion may  follow  and  right  habits  be  started,  I  have 


iv  GOOD  HEALTH 

realized  that  children  should  be  instructed  not  by  methods 
of  dogmatic  assertion  but  rather  by  knowledge  of  the 
facts  on  which  such  assertions  rest.  I  have  also  been 
convinced  that,  in  so  far  as  possible,  the  facts  should 
relate  to  the  child's  own  life  and  environment;  in  other 
words,  that  children  should  be  taught  through  experi- 
ment and  personal  experience.  This,  therefore,  is  the 
plan  of  the  series. 

The  present  volume  gives  detailed  instruction  in  mat- 
ters of  personal  health:  what  to  do  in  caring  for  eyes, 
ears,  teeth,  finger  nails,  hair,  etc.;  why  we  keep  clean; 
how  to  get  pure  air  into  a  room  and  impure  air  out  of 
it;  why  this  is  needed,  as  proved  by  experiment,  etc.  In 
each  case  the  child  himself  is  made  to  demonstrate  the 
need.  This  method  of  instruction  is  indeed  a  dominant 
characteristic  of  the  series  as  a  whole.  Each  book  has 
been  prepared  with  the  conviction  that  children  are  influ- 
enced by  facts  which  result  in  definite  courses  of  reason- 
ing. Assure  a  child  that  unwashed  people,  crowded  into 
unclean  rooms,  breathing  impure  air,  and  drinking  im- 
pure water  are  more  likely  to  be  ill  than  clean  people  in 
clean  rooms,  breathing  pure  air,  and  drinking  pure  water, 
and  he  may  or  may  not  believe  you ;  but  explain  to  him 
the  nature  of  those  microbes  which  endanger  life  through 
water,  air,  and  food ;  show  by  actual  facts  how  the  death 
rate  has  been  raised  and  lowered ;  demonstrate  by  indi- 
vidual example  the  laws  of  contagion,  and  we  shall  con- 


INTRODUCTION  V 

vince  the  child  by  the  same  facts  that  have  convinced 
his  elders. 

The  current  notion  has  been,  "  a  little  book  for  a  little 
child."  To  me  it  seems  so  true  as  to  be  almost  axiomatic, 
that  the  younger  the  child  the  more  often  must  a  fact  be 
told  and  the  more  fully  must  it  be  elaborated.  The 
capacity  to  profit  by  generalized  statements  comes  only 
with  age.  For  this  reason,  in  the  present  series,  even  on 
the  subjects  of  alcohol  and  narcotics,  dogmatic  assertion 
and  the  easy  moral  have  been  avoided.  Treatment  of 
subjects  by  this  method  necessarily  increases  the  size 
of  the  text  somewhat,  but  it  also  rouses  and  holds  the 
interest  of  the  reader. 

Although  I  have  thus  planned  the  series  myself,  the 
work  of  writing  the  separate  volumes  has  been  done  by 
others.  And  it  is  but  just  to  the  author  of  each  book  to 
say  that  in  preparing  the  facts  for  presentation  no  pains 
has  been  spared  to  secure  acquaintance  at  first-hand 
with  the  work  of  the  original  investigators  upon  whose 
authority  the  facts  rest.  An  illustration  of  this  is  found 
in  the  study  of  pure  water  as  given  later  in  the  series 
when  typhoid  fever  is  under  discussion.  The  author  not 
only  visited  the  experiment  station  in  Lawrence,  Massa- 
chusetts, where  more  scientific  work  has  been  done  in 
sewage  filtration  than  elsewhere  in  the  United  States, 
but  also  made  careful  study  of  water  conditions  in  New 
York,  London,  Pittsburg,  and  other  important  cities. 


vi  GOOD  HEALTH 

Other  subjects  in  the  books  are  treated  with  similar 
thoroughness.  In  fact  the  reference  lists  given  with  each 
volume,  although  representing  the  best  available  material 
for  the  use  of  teachers,  gives  but  part  of  that  which  was 
actually  used  in  the  preparation  of  the  books  themselves. 

During  the  past  few  years  important  contributions 
have  been  made  to  the  fund  of  material  bearing  upon  the 
effects  of  the  use  of  alcohol.  These  contributions  have 
come  partly  from  scientific  work  in  America,  England, 
and  Germany,  partly  from  recent  careful  investigations 
concerning  the  interrelations  of  drink  with  crime  and 
pauperism,  and  partly  from  practical  anti-alcohol  require- 
ments on  the  part  of  large  business  corporations.  The 
facts  so  contributed,  together  with  those  more  generally 
known,  furnish  a  story  of  such  exceptional  vividness  and 
power  that,  in  regard  to  scientific  instruction  on  the  sub- 
jects of  alcohol  and  narcotics,  we  cannot  but  be  faithful 
to  the  demands  of  school  law  in  the  various  states. 

LUTHER  HALSEY  GULICK 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.  BREATHING  AND  PURE  AIR i 

II.  PURE  AIR  AND  THINGS  THAT  SPOIL  IT 6 

III.  TOBACCO  AND  PURE  AIR 11 

IV.  HOW  THE    AlR    MOVES    AND    HOW    MUCH    WE    NEED       .       .  l6 

V.  How  TO  GET  FRESH  AIR.     DRAFTS 21 

VI.  VENTILATION  OF  THE  BUILDING  You  ARE  IN      ...  27 

VII.  A  LITTLE  LESSON  ABOUT  LITTLE  THINGS.    MICROBES.  29 

VIII.  MICROBES  AND  KEEPING  CLEAN 34 

IX.  DUST  AND  CLEANLINESS 38 

X.  TOBACCO  CHEWING  AND  CLEANLINESS     ......  43 

XI.    WHY    AND    HOW    WE    NEED    TO    SLEEP 47 

XII.  SOME  RULES  ABOUT  SLEEPING 52 

XIII.  HABITS  OF  SLEEPING 57 

XIV.  DANGERS  TO  THE  EYESIGHT 62 

XV.  READING,  BOOK  PRINT,  AND  GLASSES 70 

XVI.  ANIMALS  AND  ALCOHOL 77 

XVII.  ANIMALS  AND  ALCOHOL  (continued') 83 

XVIII.  THE  EAR  THAT  WE  CAN  SEE 90 

XIX.  THE  EAR  WE  CANNOT  SEE 95 

XX.  THE  WAY  TO  TREAT  THE  FINGER  NAILS 101 

XXI.  CARING  FOR  THE  HAIR 108 

vii 


viii  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

XXII.  THE  HEALTH  OF  THE  SKIN 114 

XXIII.  ALCOHOL  AND  COLD  WEATHER 121 

XXIV.  ALCOHOL  AND  WARM  WEATHER 127 

XXV.  SOME  FACTS  ABOUT  THE  NOSE 131 

XXVI.  OUR  LUNGS 137 

XXVII.  LUNGS,  DUST,  AND  TOBACCO  SMOKE 142 

XXVIII.  TEETH 14? 

XXIX.  EATING 153 

XXX.  ALEXIS  ST.  MARTIN  AND  ALCOHOL       159 

XXXI.  THE  EXERCISE  WE  NEED 165 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  LIST       i?1 

GLOSSARY                             i?3 


GOOD   HEALTH 

CHAPTER    I 

BREATHING   AND    PURE   AIR 

Go  and  watch  the  baby  when  he  is  asleep.  See  how 
his  chest  rises  and  falls,  then  rises  and  falls  again. 

He  does  not  know  what  he  is  doing,  but  he  breathes 
as  perfectly  as  the  oldest  and  the  wisest  man  in  the 
world.  He  began  to  breathe  when  he  was  born,  and  he 
will  not  stop  until  he  dies ;  still  he  does  it  without  think- 
ing about  it. 

There  is  a  special  kind  of  machinery  in  each  of  us 
that  takes  care  of  our  breathing  even  when  we  are 
asleep.  Nobody  has  to  be  clever  or  old  or  good  to 
know  how  to  breathe,  though  each  of  us  can  stop  our 
breathing  if  we  care  to  try. 

See  how  long  you  can  hold  your  breath  and  be 
comfortable. 

In  some  places  men  dive  in  the  ocean  for  pearls.  They 
pick  up  the  shells  that  hold  the  pearls,  and  the  longer 
they  stay  under  water  the  more  pearls  they  can  find. 
For  this  reason  they  hold  their  breath  as  long  as  they 


2  GOOD   HEALTH 

possibly  can.  Yet  even  these  pearl  divers  cannot  go 
without  breathing  for  over  four  minutes  at  a  time. 

In  fact,  there  is  no  way  for  any  of  us  really  to  stop 
breathing  for  a  long  time  and  keep  alive.  It  is  the  same 
with  animals. 

If  you  should  hold  a  bird  in  your  hand,  and  if  he  were 
perfectly  quiet  and  did  not  even  breathe,  you  would  know 


BREATHING  WHILE  HE  SLEEPS 

that  he  was  dead,  for  breathing  is  as  important  for  birds 
and  animals  as  for  children  and  men. 

No  one  needs  to  tell  us  that  what  we  breathe  every 
minute  of  every  day  is  air.  It  is  around  us  everywhere, 
like  a  wonderful  ocean  that  we  cannot  see.  It  also 
stretches  so  far  above  us  and  above  the  clouds  that, 
try  as  we  may,  we  cannot  get  outside  of  it. 


BREATHING  AND  PURE  AIR  3 

Now  this  ocean  of  air  is  made  up  of  several  kinds  of 
gases  mixed  together.  Each  is  different  from  all  the 
others,  though  not  one  of  them  is  the  gas  that  lights  our 
houses.  Indeed,  the  gas  we  use  for  lighting  is  different 
from  the  gases  of  the  air  in  three  ways : 

1.  It  will  kill  us  if  we  breathe  much  of  it. 

2.  It  has  a  smell. 

3.  It  will  burn. 

Still  we  find  that  air  gases  are  like  this  deadly  gas 
in  two  ways: 

1.  We  cannot  see  them. 

2,  We  can  feel  them  when  they  blow  against 
us,  or  when  we  run  through  them. 

If  you  blow  on  your  hand,  you  feel  the  air  even  though 
you  cannot  see  it.  So,  too,  when  the  wind  blows,  you  do 
not  see  it,  but  you  feel  it  rushing  past. 

There  are  men  who  can  take  a  bottle  full  of  air,  sepa- 
rate it  into  its  different  gases,  and  study  each  gas  by 
itself.  Just  now,  however,  you  and  I  need  to  pay  attention 
to  only  two  of  them,  —  oxygen  and  carbon  dioxid. 

If  I  should  put  a  mouse  into  a  jar  with  a  good  deal 
of  oxygen  in  it,  he  would  act  so  merry  that  you  would 
think  he  had  never  before  in  his  life  felt  so  happy.  If 
I  should  then  fill  another  jar  with  carbon  dioxid  and 
put  the  same  small  mouse  into  it,  he  would  surely  die 
in  a  minute  unless  I  pulled  him  out  again  as  promptly 
as  possible. 


4  GOOD  HEALTH 

This  shows  the  difference  between  oxygen  and  car- 
bon dioxid:  one  is  our  friend,  the  other  our  enemy. 
Fortunately,  in  fresh,  outdoor  air  there  is  always  much 
oxygen  and  little  carbon  dioxid. 

A  change  comes,  however,  in  the  rooms  where  people 
live  and  breathe,  for  when  you  take  a  deep  breath  of  sweet, 
pure  air  the  lungs  use  up  a  part  of  the  oxygen  at  once ; 
and  when  you  expel  the  air  from  your  lungs,  carbon 
dioxid  is  there  in  place  of  the  oxygen.  The  exchange 
is  made  inside  the  lungs. 

It  is  plain,  then,  that  breathing  takes  oxygen  out  of  the 
air  and  puts  carbon  dioxid  in  its  place. 

If  a  man  is  in  a  very  small  room,  and  if  no  fresh  air 
can  get  in  from  anywhere,  his  breathing  will  change  the 
air  in  the  room  so  much  that  if  he  stays  there  long  enough 
he  will  die.  One  of  the  saddest  cases  of  this  kind  was  in 
India  when  the  British  and  Hindoo  soldiers  were  fight- 
ing each  other.  Finally  the  Hindoos  captured  one  hun- 
dred and  forty-six  British  prisoners  and  put  them  into 
a  room  that  was  about  twenty  feet  square.  It  had  two 
small  windows,  so  that  a  little  air  did  manage  to  get 
in;  but  there  was  not  enough  of  it  for  so  many  people. 
Fresh  air  could  not  enter  fast  enough  to  give  the  men 
the  oxygen  they  needed,  and  the  air  that  was  in  the 
room  grew  worse  and  worse  until  everybody  suffered 
and  gasped  for  breath,  and  when  morning  came  only 
twenty-three  of  the  men  were  alive.  The  rest  had  died 


BREATHING  AND  PURE  AIR  5 

for  lack  of  oxygen.  Ever  afterwards,  in  memory  of  that 
terrible  night,  the  room  itself  was  called  the  Black  Hole 
of  Calcutta. 

It  is  fortunate  for  us  that  air  does  not  often  get  so  bad 
as  that  in  any  room. 

QUESTIONS 

1.  How  long  can  a  man  go  without  breathing? 

2.  What  difference  is  there  between  the  air  we  breathe  and  the  gas 
we  burn? 

3.  Which  gas  in  the  air  keeps  us  alive? 

4.  What  would  happen  to  us  if  we  could  get  nothing  but  carbon 
dioxid  to  breathe? 

5.  What  happened  in  the  Black  Hole  of  Calcutta? 


CHAPTER  II 
PURE  AIR  AND  THINGS  THAT  SPOIL  IT 

Sometimes  when  you  get  up  in  the  morning  you  feel 
happy  and  rested  and  good-natured.  When  your  shoe 
string  breaks  you  laugh,  and  when  a  button  comes  off 
you  think  it  quite  a  joke.  Then  perhaps  the  very  next 
day  everything  goes  wrong  from  morning  until  night; 
it  is  hard  to  be  good  on  such  days,  and  harder  yet  to  be 
cheerful. 

Of  course  the  reason  is  not  always  the  same,  though 
you  will  often  find  that  you  slept  in  pure  air  the  first 
night  and  in  impure  air  the  second  night.  In  fact,  that 
is  always  enough  to  make  a  great  difference  in  our  feel- 
ings the  next  day.  In  pure  air  our  lungs  get  more  oxygen 
and  we  sleep  well ;  if  we  sleep  well  we  are  rested,  and 
when  we  are  rested,  it  is  the  easiest  thing  in  the  world 
to  be  kind  and  cheerful.  On  the  other  hand,  when  we 
are  not  rested  we  can  hardly  help  feeling  cross. 

The  same  is  true  about  learning  our  lessons  and 
reciting  them  well,  though  even  teachers  forget  this 
sometimes. 

I    can  think  of   two  schoolrooms.     In  the  first  the 

children  look  unhappy;  their  eyes  are  dull  and  their 

6 


PURE  AIR  AND  THINGS  THAT  SPOIL  IT  7 

cheeks  are  flushed,  though  some  of  them  have  pale  faces 
instead.  Only  a  few  sit  up  straight,  while  none  of  them 
look  as  if  they  enjoyed  studying.  One  class  is  reciting  a 
spelling  lesson,  and  I  notice  that  several  of  the  children 
miss  the  easiest  words.  In  this  room  the  air  is  wretched. 
I  look  around  and  cannot  see  any  place  for  fresh  air 
to  enter. 

The  second  room  is  of  the  same  size,  and  although  it 
holds  the  same  number  of  children,  still  everything  here 
is  different.  Both  the  girls  and  the  boys  look  as  if  they 
enjoyed  studying,  most  of  them  are  sitting  up  straight, 
their  eyes  are  bright,  they  do  not  often  miss  the  easy 
words,  and  nobody  looks  cross.  As  might  be  expected, 
enough  fresh  air  is  coming  into  the  room  all  the  time  to 
keep  it  fresh  and  pure. 

If  you  should  put  very  many  dogs  or  other  living  crea- 
tures into  a  room,  and  then  shut  every  door  and  window, 
the  animals  would  use  up  the  air  as  fast  as  children  do ; 
and  if  they  could  get  no  more,  they  would  die  as  those 
men  died  in  the  Black  Hole  of  Calcutta. 

Last  summer  a  ten-year-old  friend  of  mine  caught  a 
mouse  by  the  tail  and  put  it  under  a  tumbler.  She  was 
afraid  it  would  not  get  air  enough,  so  she  slipped  a 
pencil  under  one  edge  of  the  glass  to  hold  it  up  and  let 
the  air  get  in.  She  was  so  careful  of  the  health  of  the 
mouse  that  it  lived  merrily,  until  one  day  the  glass  tipped 
over  and  it  ran  away. 


8 


GOOD  HEALTH 


Turn  now  to  grass  and  trees.  Notice  the  green  leaves 
as  they  flutter  in  the  sunshine.  You  would  not  suspect  it, 
but  even  while  you  watch  them  they  are  at  work.  Each 
separate  one  is  indeed  taking  carbon  dioxid  from  the  air 
and  is  uniting  it  with  water  to  make  food  for  itself ;  and 
later  the  food  becomes  part  of  the  plant.  Also,  while 
these  changes  go  on,  the  plant  gives 
off  some  of  the  oxygen  which  is  freed 
from  the  carbon  dioxid. 

Now  this  part  of  plant  life  goes  on 
only  in  the  light.  But  continually,  by 
night  as  well  as  by  day,  plants  also 
breathe  by  taking  in  oxygen  and  by 
giving  off  carbon  dioxid.  The  truth  is, 
that  even  though  they  have  no  lungs, 
breathing  is  as  necessary  to  plants  as 
it  is  to  ourselves;  for,  whether  they 
are  in  the  sunshine  or  in  total  dark- 
ness, they  depend  on  oxygen  as  much 
as  we  do.  Other  things  use  oxygen  too. 

Light  a  small  candle,  set  over  it  a  glass  jar  that  fits 
down  flat  on  the  table,  and  watch  the  flame.  At  first 
it  will  burn  as  brightly  as  ever;  then  it  will  grow  more 
and  more  dim,  until  at  last  it  will  go  out  entirely.  If  you 
should  now  put  a  mouse  or  bird  into  the  jar,  it  would 
die  at  once,  because  the  oxygen  in  the  jar  has  been  used 
up  by  the  candle. 


USING  UP  THE  OXYGEN 


PURE  AIR  AND  THINGS  THAT  SPOIL  IT  9 

This  is  not  all.  Men  have  tried  experiments  with  gas 
jets,  and  they  find  that  when  one  of  them  is  burning  it 
uses  up  more  oxygen  than  three  people ;  that  is,  it  will 
use  up  the  air  three  times  as  fast  as  you  or  I  do. 

The  next  time  you  are  in  a  lecture  hall  or  a  church  in 
the  evening,  count  the  gas  jets  that  are  lighted.  If  there 
are  one  hundred  of  them,  be  sure  to  tell  yourself  that 
they  are  using  up  the  oxygen  as  fast  as  if  there  were 
three  hundred  more  people  present. 

This  is  bad  enough,  but  it  is  worse  yet  to  have  a  gas 
jet  open  when  the  gas  is  not  lighted,  for  nothing  spoils 
the  air  faster.  People  who  do  not  know  the  danger 
sometimes  make  the  terrible  mistake  of  blowing  the  gas 
out  instead  of  turning  it  off  when  they  go  to  bed. 

In  December,  1903,  in  San  Francisco,  during  one 
night,  six  people  in  six  different  houses  died  because 
the  gas  escaped  into  their  rooms.  They  died  because 
they  breathed  this  gas  instead  of  oxygen. 

If  you  ever  notice  the  odor  of  gas  in  a  room,  be  sure 
to  find  out  where  it  comes  from  and  turn  the  gas  off.  In 
some  cities  the  gas  has  no  odor,  and  this  makes  it  more 
dangerous. 

Besides  the  odor  of  gas,  other  bad  smells  almost 
always  show  that  something  is  spoiling  the  air. 

Sometimes  these  unpleasant  smells  come  from  garbage 
cans  and  wagons.  Sometimes  they  stream  out  of  an  un- 
clean cellar  or  a  basement,  or  from  soiled  rags  tucked  away 


10  GOOD  HEALTH 

somewhere,  or  from  food  or  meat  that  is  spoiling.  Such 
things  should  never  be  left  where  they  can  change  the  air. 

In  some  cities  more  people  die  in  one  part  than  in 
another,  and  often  the  whole  trouble  comes  from  impure 
air.  Those  who  breathe  it  are  not  as  strong  as  they 
would  be  if  they  breathed  only  pure  air,  and  on  this 
account  it  is  easy  for  them  to  become  ill.  Worse  yet, 
when  such  people  are  once  ill,  if  they  have  to  keep  on 
breathing  the  impure  air,  they  are  far  more  likely  to 
die  than  if  they  were  breathing  pure  air. 

Let  us  do  all  we  can  to  breathe  pure  air  every  day,  so 
that  we  may  feel  well  and  be  well,  and  learn  our  lessons 
with  as  little  trouble  as  possible. 

QUESTIONS 

1.  What  difference  does  it  make  with  our  feelings  whether  we 
sleep  in  pure  air  or  impure  air? 

2.  Describe  the  two  schoolrooms. 

3.  If  a  room  should  be  filled  with  animals,  and  if  they  should  get 
no  fresh  air,  what  would  happen  to  them? 

4.  What  do  leaves  take  from  the  air  ? 

5.  What  do  plants  do  with  carbon  dioxid  ? 

6.  Which  gases  do  plants  use  in  breathing  ? 

7.  How  can  you  show  that  a  candle  uses  up  oxygen? 

8.  How  much  more  oxygen  does  one  gas  jet  use  than  one  man? 

9.  If  a  gas  jet  is  open  and  not  lighted,  what  harm  does  it  do  to 
the  air  of  a  room? 

10.    Why  should  we  keep  air  free  from  smells  of  every  kind? 


CHAPTER  III 

TOBACCO  AND  PURE  AIR 

When  I  was  a  child  one  of  the  most  interesting 
things  every  summer  was  to  watch  my  uncle  smoke  his 
bees.  He  had  ten  hives  and  he  thought  he  ought  to 


PREPARING  TO  ROB  THE  BEES 


have  some  honey.  But  the  bees  wanted  it  themselves, 
and  for  this  reason  they  were  ready  to  sting  him  when- 
ever he  came  to  get  it,  —  even  as  your  father  would 
shoot  any  burglar  who  came  to  rob  him. 


12  GOOD  HEALTH 

But  my  uncle  knew  a  way  to  manage.  He  took  a 
pipe,  filled  it  with  tobacco,  and  smoked  it  into  each  hive. 
At  first  the  bees  were  excited  and  flew  around  as  a  man 
might  do  if  his  house  were  on  fire.  Nevertheless  they 
had  to  breathe  smoke  instead  of  pure  air,  and  it  soon 
made  them  so  dull  that  they  could  not  fly  and  could  not 
even  sting.  They  stood  still,  or  walked  around  slowly, 
and  my  uncle  brushed  them  from  one  place  to  another 
and  took  as  much  honey  as  he  wanted. 

When  the  air  in  the  hive  became  pure  again  the  bees 
felt  better  and  hurried  off  to  visit  the  flowers.  They 
wanted  to  get  honey  enough  to  fill  their  little  barns 
again  so  as  not  to  be  hungry  in  the  winter. 

That  story  is  just  to  show  what  tobacco  smoke  does 
for  bees.  It  makes  them  rather  stupid  for  a  while,  but  it 
does  not  kill  them. 

Here  is  another  story. 

The  other  day  I  went  to  see  a  friend  of  mine  who  has 
a  greenhouse.  Everything  was  growing  well,  and  I 
said,  "  But  how  do  you  manage  to  keep  off  the  bugs 
and  the  worms  ?  " 

"Ah!"  said  he;  "tobacco  smoke  does  it."  This  sur- 
prised me,  until  he  showed  me  great  bundles  of  stems 
of  tobacco  leaves  that  looked  like  small  twigs.  He  said 
he  bought  a  ton  of  the  stuff  at  a  time.  He  also  told 
me  that  the  soft  part  of  each  leaf  is  used  for  chewing 
tobacco,  for  pipe  tobacco,  and  for  cigars,  but  that  the 


TOBACCO  AND  PURE  AIR  13 

stems  are  saved  for  greenhouses  all  over  the  country. 
It  seems  that  once  every  two  weeks  he  himself  uses 
these  stems  for  small  bonfires  up  and  down  all  the 
straight  rows  of  his  greenhouse. 

He  takes  an  armful  for  each  fire,  spreads  it  out  a 
little  on  the  ground,  lights  it,  and  shuts  every  door  and 
window  to  keep  the  smoke  in. 

After  a  while  the  room  is  so  full  of  smoke  that  he 
cannot  stay  in  it  a  minute  himself  because  it  makes  him 


^^^yipPI 
*•*%-••  • 


p 

SMOKING  OUT  THE  INSECTS 

deathly  sick.  But  the  bugs  and  the  worms  have  shorter 
legs ;  they  cannot  run  away.  When,  therefore,  the  stuff 
is  burned  up  and  the  fires  have  smoked  out,  and  the  man 
goes  in  again,  he  generally  finds  the  insects  all  dead.  If 
some  are  alive,  he  gives  them  another  big  smoke  the  next 
day,  and  they  never  live  to  eat  any  more.  Smoke  from 
an  ordinary  bonfire  would  not  do  this. 


14  GOOD  HEALTH 

Both  of  these  stories  show  what  tobacco  smoke  does 
for  insects.  But  it  is  more  important  for  you  and  me  to 
know  whether  it  can  do  us  any  harm.  I  met  a  man  the 
other  day  who  used  to  smoke  sweet  fern  and  grapevine 
stems  when  he  was  a  young  boy.  He  says  smoking  was 
great  fun  in  those  days  and  that  it  never  made  him  sick, 
until  once  when  he  thought  he  would  try  a  real  cigar. 
He  then  took  his  pennies,  bought  the  biggest  cigar  he 
could  find,  lighted  it,  and  smoked  about  half  an  inch. 
He  said  he  was  so  sick  for  five  hours  afterwards  that 
he  thought  he  was  going  to  die.  He  went  into  the  barn, 
lay  down  on  the  hay,  and  wished  he  could  be  a  cow  and 
not  suffer  so.  When  his  father  found  him  he  felt  better, 
but  after  that  he  never  wanted  to  smoke  again. 

It  is  the  poison  in  tobacco  smoke  that  makes  it  so  dif- 
ferent from  any  other  kind  of  smoke.  It  is  this  that 
made  the  boy  sick  when  he  tried  to  smoke  the  cigar, 
and  it  is  this  that  killed  the  insects. 

In  another  case  the  boy  was  not  to  blame.  He  was 
three  years  old  and  had  a  father  who  was  a  great  smoker. 
This  man  played  with  his  son,  petted  him,  held  him  in 
his  lap,  and  often  they  slept  together;  but  he  also 
noticed  that  whenever  he  stayed  at  home  for  several 
weeks  his  son  grew  pale  and  weak  and  did  not  care  to 
eat.  Later  he  noticed  again  that  when  he  went  out  of 
town  and  stayed  away  from  home  for  a  good  while  the 
boy  grew  merry  and  strong  and  as  well  as  ever.  This 


TOBACCO  AND  PURE  AIR  15 

seemed  so  strange  that  he  asked  the  doctor  about  it. 
Without  any  hesitation  the  wise  man  told  him  that  the 
trouble  all  came  from  the  smoke  of  the  tobacco  that  he 
used.  He  said  the  boy  could  not  get  well  unless  the 
father  stopped  smoking,  or  unless  he  went  away  from 
home  and  stayed  away.  This  put  the  matter  so  clearly, 
and  the  man  loved  his  son  so  much,  that  he  stopped 
smoking  at  once  and  the  boy  got  well.  From  that  time 
on  he  stayed  well,  and  even  the  father  himself  was  in 
better  health. 

If  you  should  walk  through  a  train  of  cars  with  your 
eyes  shut,  you  would  know  the  smoking  car  by  its  smell. 
Indeed,  the  odor  of  the  tobacco  smoke  is  so  strong  that 
even  if  no  one  had  smoked  in  that  car  for  weeks,  the 
smell  would  remain  and  tell  the  story.  It  is  also  so  dis- 
agreeable to  some  people  that  men  who  are  traveling, 
and  wish  to  smoke,  have  to  do  it  in  a  car  by  themselves, 
for  even  the  smell  of  the  smoke  sometimes  makes 
women  and  children  car-sick  when  they  travel. 

QUESTIONS 

1 .  Describe  the  robbing  of  the  bees. 

2.  How  did  the  man  treat  his  greenhouse  bugs  and  worms? 

3.  What  is  done  with  the  different  parts  of  a  tobacco  leaf? 

4.  How  does  the  first  smoke  sometimes  affect  a  man  or  child? 

5.  What  is  it  in  the  tobacco  that  does  the  harm? 

6.  Tell  the  story  about  the  boy  and  his  smoking  father. 

7.  Why  do  men  have  to  travel  in  a  separate  car  when  they  smoke? 


CHAPTER   IV 

HOW  THE  AIR  MOVES  AND  HOW  MUCH  WE  NEED 

Look  at  the  trees  when  the  wind  blows,  and  see  the 
clouds  fly.  They  show  that  the  air  is  moving  fast,  and 
we  say,  "  The  wind  is  blowing."  But  in  the  house  the 


MOVEMENT  OF  THE  AIR 

air  moves  more  quietly,  though  even  here  the  warm  air 
and  the  cold  are  always  changing  places. 

Put  a  soft  feather  above  a  lighted  lamp  or  gas  jet  and 
see  it  fly  toward  the  ceiling.  Hot  air  is  lighter  than 
cold  air,  and  it  gets  so  very  hot  around  the  lamp  that 
it  goes  up  with  a  rush,  taking  the  feather  with  it.  Soon, 

16 


HOW  THE  AIR  MOVES  AND  HOW  MUCH  WE  NEED   1 7 


however,  the  air  grows  cooler  as  it  leaves  the  lamp,  and 
the  feather  comes  down  again. 

Breathe  on  your  hand,  and  you  will  see  that  your 
breath  is  warmer  than  the  air  in  the  room.  You  will 
know  from  this  that  your  breath  rises,  too. 

Since  all  this  warm  air  goes  to  the  top  of  the  room  as 
fast  as  it  can,  the  air  up  there  must  be  warmer  than  it  is 
on  the  floor.  To  find 
out  about  this,  you 
might  set  a  thermom- 
eter on  the  floor  for 
fifteen  minutes  and  see 
how  high  the  mercury 
goes.  Now  put  the 
same  thermometer  on 
top  of  the  bookshelves 
for  another  fifteen  min- 
utes and  look  at  the  mercury  again.  In  winter  you  will  find 
quite  a  difference  between  the  two  places,  for  at  that  time 
hot  air  is  sent  into  the  room  and  it  rises  to  the  ceiling  first. 

In  summer,  wrhen  the  windows  are  open,  there  is  not 
so  much  difference  between  floor  and  ceiling  air  as  during 
the  winter. 

I  stopped  my  writing  just  now  to  make  an  experiment 
in  the  warm  room  where  I  sit.  I  opened  the  door  into 
the  cold  hall  a  narrow  crack,  then  lighted  a  match  and 
held  it  close  to  the  crack  in  the  door,  near  the  floor. 


DRAFT  INTO  THE  ROOM 


i8 


GOOD  HEALTH 


Instantly  the  flame  was  bent  far  over  into  the  room. 
This  showed  that  down  there  the  air  was  hurrying  from 
the  cold  hall  into  my  warm  room. 

Next  I  held  the  lighted  match  against  the  open  crack, 
near  to  the  top  of  the  door.  Thereupon  the  flame  went 
through  the  crack  and  tried  to  get  out  into  the  hall. 

From  this  I  knew  that  up 
there  the  warm  air  was  going 
out  into  the  cold  hall  as  fast 
as  it  could  squeeze  through 
the  crack  of  the  door.  The 
whole  experiment  shows  how 
the  air  hurries  back  and  forth 
through  any  crack  it  finds. 

Since  the  air  moves  so  easily 
in  one  direction  and  another, 
it  is  never  hard  to  get  fresh 

air  into  a  house  from  out  of  doors,  and  it  is  no  harder 
to  send  impure  air  out  of  doors  from  any  room  or  any 
house.  All  we  have  to  do  is  to  keep  the  matter  in  mind 
and  arrange  for  it. 

We  must  also  remember  that  in  any  room  impure  air 
mixes  with  pure  air  fast  enough  to  spoil  the  whole  of  it 
in  a  very  short  time.  We  cannot  tell  the  condition  of 
the  air  by  the  looks  of  the  room  because  we  cannot  see 
the  air  itself,  but  a  little  experiment  with  ink  and  water 
will  help  us  out, 


DRAFT  OUT  OF  THE  ROOM 


HOW  THE  AIR  MOVES  AND  HOW  MUCH  WE  NEED 


Put  ten  drops  of  ink  into  a  glass  of  water  and  it  will 
mix  so  quickly  that  you  will  have  rather  poor  stuff  for 
drinking.  Put  in  fifty  drops  and  the  water  will  be  so 
black  that  nobody  would  think  of  drinking  it.  This  is 
about  the  way  that  impure  air  from  the  lungs  of  fifty 
children  mixes  with 
pure  air  in  a  school- 
room and  spoils  it  for 
breathing.  As  this 
mixing  goes  on  all  the 
time,  we  need  to  know 
just  how  much  fresh 
air  we  ought  to  have 
to  keep  the  whole  of  it 
pure  enough  to  breathe. 

You  might  measure 
something  that  is  one 
foot  long,  one  foot  high, 
and  one  foot  wide.  A 
box  as  big  as  that  will  hold  one  cubic  foot  of  air. 

Now  men  who  know  about  it  say  that,  if  possible,  a 
child  should  have  two  thousand  cubic  feet  of  fresh  air 
every  hour.  This  means  that,  if  you  could  use  the  box  for 
a  spoon,  you  would  have  to  put  two  thousand  spoonfuls  of 
air  every  hour  from  out  of  doors  into  the  room  where  you 
are.  More  than  that,  you  would  have  to  make  room  for  it 
by  dipping  just  as  much  impure  air  out  of  the  room. 


THIS  HOLDS  ONE  CUBIC  FOOT 


20  GOOD  HEALTH 

Each  child  needs  as  much  as  you  do,  and  grown  people 
need  more.  This  shows  how  much  air  must  come  and 
go  every  hour  to  supply  the  fresh  air  needed  in  a  room 
full  of  school  children. 

In  almost  every  city  there  are  old  schoolhouses  where 
the  rooms  do  not  get  fresh  air  enough ;  but  in  New  York 
City  the  new  schoolhouses  are  made  in  such  a  way  that 
each  child  has  eighteen  hundred  cubic  feet  of  fresh  air 
every  hour. 

QUESTIONS 

1.  What  signs  show  that  the  air  out  of  doors  is  moving? 

2.  What  experiment  shows  that  warm  air  rises? 

3.  How  do  you  know  that  your  breath  is  warmer  than  the  air  in 
the  room? 

4.  How  can  you  find  out  that  the  air  at  the  top  of  a  room  is 
warmer  than  the  air  near  the  floor? 

5.  Why  is  there  a  greater  difference  between  the  air  of  floor  and 
ceiling  in  winter  than  in  summer? 

6.  Describe  the  experiment  with  a  match  at  the  crack  of  a  door 
and  tell  what  it  proves. 

7.  What  does  the  ink  experiment  show  about  pure  and  impure 
air? 

8.  What  does  breathing  do  to  air  in  a  room? 

9.  How  big  a  box  would  you  need  to  hold  one  cubic  foot  of  air? 
10.    How  many  cubic  feet  of  air  does  each  child  need? 


CHAPTER   V 
HOW  TO  GET  FRESH  AIR.    DRAFTS 

Some  people  think  that  we  do  not  need  to  trouble  our- 
selves about  ventilating  a  room  when  it  is  large.  They 
believe  that  there  is  air  enough  in  it  to  last  a  long  time. 
But  this  is  a  mistake.  To  be  sure,  the  air  lasts  a  little 
longer  in  a  large  room  than  in  a  small  one ;  still  after  an 
hour  or  so  the  people  in  it  need  to  have  just  as  much 
pure  air  come  in  and  impure  air  go  out  as  if  they  were 
in  a  small  room. 

Whenever  you  go  into  a  house  from  out  of  doors 
take  special  pains  to  notice  how  the  air  smells.  Notice 
it  when  you  first  go  in,  because  each  one  of  us  gets  used 
to  air  after  we  have  been  in  it  awhile,  and  then  we  can- 
not tell  whether  it  is  pure  or  impure.  If  it  really  has  any 
odor,  or  if  it  does  not  seem  pleasant  as  compared  to  the 
air  out  of  doors,  you  may  know  that  it  is  not  pure. 

Do  not  make  a  mistake  and  think  that  air  is  impure 
when  it  is  only  warm,  for  warm  air  may  be  pure  air  too. 
Sometimes  you  will  have  to  go  by  the  odor  that  you 
find  when  the  room  "  smells  close,"  as  we  say. 

Yet,  after  all,  the  great  and  useful  thing  for  us  to  know 
is  just  what  to  do  to  get  pure  air  in  and  impure  air  out 
of  our  homes. 

21 


22 


GOOD  HEALTH 


If  the  house  is  old-fashioned,  probably  the  only  way  is 
by  opening  doors  and  windows.  This  is  a  good  deal  of 
trouble  sometimes;  nevertheless,  it  must  be  done.  To 

show  how  little  time  it 

&'"'  takes  to  change  the  air, 

%,.  ":%^ "')     suppose   you  shut  all 

'"^:C=: ':;%..-,     -(":     :;      the  windows   of   your 

t ....  %J^Y.<"  J$?  room  and  light  a  joss- 
stick.  See  how  quietly 
the  smoke  floats  around  here  and  there. 
Soon  the  room  is  quite  full  of  it.  Now 
open  windows  on  opposite  sides  of  the 
room  and  see  what  happens. 

If  a  breeze  is  blowing  in  the  right 
direction  out  of  doors,  you  will  fine 
that  it  pours  in  at  one  window  whil< 
the  smoke  streams  out  of  the  othei 
and  the  room  is  cleared  in  almost  n< 
time.  Of  course  the  impure  air  is  pour- 
ing out  of  the  room  with  the  smoki 
and  the  pure  air  is  coming  in  just 
fast,  though  we  do  not  see  it. 
Stop  just  here;  look  around  the  room  you  are  in  an< 
see  whether  you  can  tell  how  the  fresh  air  gets  in  an< 
how  the  bad  air  gets  out.    You  may  have  to  judge  b; 
the  windows.    Notice  which   are    shut  and   which  ai 
open,  and  see  if  the  wind  is  blowing;   then  try  to  decid< 


CIRCULATION  OF  AIR 
IN  A  ROOM 


HOW  TO  GET  FRESH  AIR  23 

whether  or  not  enough  air  comes  in  to  supply  all  who 
need  it. 

If  everything  is  shut  you  are  breathing  impure  air 
and  you  ought  to  do  something  about  it. 

Nobody  can  tell  exactly  how  wide  open  windows 
d  to  be,  because  all  depends  on  the  size  of  the  room 


DRIVING  AIR  OUT  OF  A  ROOM 

and  the  number  of  people  in  it;  also  on  the  size  of 
the  windows  and  the  direction  of  the  wind.  When  a 
breeze  blows,  an  opening  of  an  inch  or  two  may  be 
enough,  but  on  a  quiet  day  in  summer  the  windows 
should  be  wide  open. 

Some  people  think  that  the  hall  door  will  give  all  the 
air  they  need,  yet  they  do  not  take  pains  to  see  that 
the  hall  itself  is  getting  outdoor  air. 


GOOD  HEALTH 


When  a  room  has  to  get  its  air  from  windows,  there 
is  always  danger  from  drafts.  Now  a  draft  is  like  a  small 
wind  in  a  room,  that  is,  we  say  there  is  a  draft  when  the 
air  is  moving  fast  enough  for  us  to  feel  it.  If  a  window 
is  open  on  each  side  of  the  room  where  you  are  sitting, 

and  if  you  are  be- 
tween them,  you  are 
probably  in  a  draft, 
and  I  am  afraid  you 
will  catch  cold. 

It  is  curious,  but 
true,  that  it  is  easier 
to  catch  cold  in  a 
draft  in  a  room  than 
in  the  wind  out  of 
doors,  even  when 
that  wind  is  blowing 
hard  enough  to  break 
the  branches  of  trees. 
The  reason  is  that  a  draft  is  very  uneven.  It  cools  pai 
of  the  body  at  a  time,  and  when  this  is  the  case  the 
machinery  that  regulates  body  temperature  does  not 
work  well.  It  does  better  when  the  whole  body  is  warm 
or  the  whole  body  cold  than  when  it  is  warm  in  on< 
spot  and  cold  in  another. 

Perhaps  the  best  way  with  windows  is  to  open  them 
at  the  top.    Then  the  air  blows  across  the  upper  part 


AlR    LEAVING   THE    ROOM 


HOW  TO  GET  FRESH  AIR  25 

the  room,  and  not  low  down  where  we  are  sitting;  or 
one  window  might  be  open  at  the  top  and  another  open 
at  the  bottom. 

In  any  kind  of  house  a  fireplace  helps  more  than 
anything  else  to  keep  the  air  pure. 

Perhaps  you  are  in  a  house  that  is  heated  in  the  best 
way.  In  such  houses  the  heat  comes  from  steam  pipes 
or  hot-water  pipes  in  every  room.  Besides  that,  fresh  air 
is  heated  in  the  basement  and  pours  into  each  room 
through  a  register.  Then  too,  there  is  a  ventilator  or 
a  fireplace  in  each  room  and  the  impure  air  escapes 
through  these. 

When  heating  and  ventilating  are  managed  in  this 
way  nobody  need  be  anxious  to  open  and  shut  windows, 
and  there  is  no  danger  from  drafts. 

In  your  own  room  to-night  decide  just  what  is  the 
best  way  to  supply  yourself  with  fresh  air  while  asleep. 
Fortunately  there  is  always  so  much  of  it  out  of  doors 
that  all  we  have  to  do  is  to  give  it  a  chance  to  get  into 
our  rooms.  When  we  let  it  in  by  the  window  at  night 
must  be  careful  to  have  bedding  enough,  and  we 
must  never  sleep  in  a  draft. 

QUESTIONS 

1 .  How  can  you  tell  whether  the  air  in  a  room  is  pure  or  impure  ? 

2.  In  an  old-fashioned  house  how  would  you  get  fresh  air? 

3.  How  is  ventilation  secured  in  the  room  where  you  are  now? 


26  GOOD  HEALTH 

4.  How  wide  open  should  the  windows  be? 

5.  Can  you  always  get  enough  fresh  air  by  leaving  the  door  open 
into  the  hall? 

6.  If  the  door  is  opened  into  the  hall  what  else  should  be  done? 

7.  How  can  you  tell  when  there  is  a  draft  in  a  room? 

8.  Why  is  a  draft  dangerous? 

9.  How  can  you  open  the  windows  so  that  there  will  be  no  draft? 
10.  What  is  the  best  way  to  heat  and  ventilate  a  house? 


CHAPTER  VI 

VENTILATION  OF  THE  BUILDING  YOU  ARE  IN 

Your  teacher  will  take  you  to  the  basement  to-day,  if 
she  can,  and  you  will  see  the  furnaces,  the  hot-air  pipes, 
and  the  fresh-air  shafts,  —  provided  a  furnace  is  used. 

Be  sure  to  ask  questions  about  anything  you  do  not 
understand. 

Find  out  whether  the  school  building  is  warmed  by 
stoves,  by  hot  air,  by  steam,  or  by  hot  water.  If  hot 
water  or  steam  is  used,  notice  whether  or  not  fresh  air 
gets  into  the  building  at  the  same  time. 

Your  teacher  will  show  you  how  the  air  comes  in  at  the 
basement,  how  it  goes  up  to  each  room,  and  how  it  then 
enters  through  the  registers.  Notice  whether  there  are 
one  or  two  large  registers  or  several  small  ones  in  your 
schoolroom.  Notice  the  same  thing  about  the  ventilators. 

If  there  are  no  registers  and  no  ventilators,  your 
teacher  will  tell  you  how  the  room  is  ventilated. 

If  stoves  do  the  heating,  see  if  windows  are  open  to 
let  the  air  in,  and  notice  whether  they  are  open  at  the 
top  or  at  the  bottom. 

Decide  whether  there  are  any  dangerous  drafts  blow- 
ing across  anybody. 

37 


APPARATUS  THAT  WARMS  A  SCHOOLHOUSE 


28 


CHAPTER  VII 


A  LITTLE  LESSON  ABOUT  LITTLE  THINGS.    MICROBES 

The  dot  at  the  end  of  this  sentence  is  about  as  big  as 
a  water  flea  looks  when  we  see  him  without  a  microscope. 

He  is  indeed  so  small  that  when  he 
jerks  along  in  the  water  we  cannot  be 
sure  that  he  has  head,  tail,  or  legs.  In 
fact,  we  hardly  notice  him  at  all  unless  he 
moves.  By  looking  at  him  through  a  mi- 
croscope, however,  we  see  that  he  is  the 
fine  animal  that  the  picture  shows ;  and 
now  we  can  study  his  wonderful  swim- 
ming legs,  his  queer  tail,  his  rounded 
head,  and  his  long,  jointed  feelers  that 
reach  around  under  his  body. 

Evidently,  although  our  eyes  are 
rather  keen  for  some  things,  they  can- 
not see  everything.  There  are  millions  upon  millions  of 
tiny  living  creatures  in  the  world  that  we  cannot  even 
catch  a  glimpse  of  without  a  magnifying  glass. 

Some  of  them  are  plants,  some  are  animals,  and  we 
know  most  of  them  by  what  they  do.    They  are  so  small 

that  the  water  flea  must  look  like  a  fearful  giant  to  them, 

29 


A  WATER  FLEA 
Greatly  magnified 


30  GOOD  HEALTH 

and  perhaps  they,  in  turn,  seem  to  him  quite  too  small 
to  notice ;  or  it  may  be  that  he  is  so  much  bigger  than 
they  are  that  it  is  as  hard  for  him  to  see  them  as  it  is  for  us 
to  see  him.  Whatever  the  case  may  be,  and  though  they 
are  so  very  small,  still  we  know  that  some  of  them  can  do 
more  harm  than  mad  dogs,  while  others  are  more  danger- 
ous than  whole  armies  of  soldiers  in  the  enemy's  country. 
They  are  around  us  everywhere,  — in  the  air  we  breathe, 
in  the  water  we  drink,  in  the  food  we  eat.  At  the  same 

time  they  are  of  so  many 
shapes  and  kinds  that  hun- 

! 

dreds  of  men  study  them 

d  yv   '     f       i^ 

*    from  one  year's  end  to  the 

FORMS  OF  BACTERIA  ,,  -, ,  r 

other  and  learn  strange  facts 

a,  grippe ;  b,  bubonic  plague ;  c, diphtheria; 

if,    tuberculosis;     *,    typhoid    fever;    about  them.     They  also  give 

^  spiral  types'  them  different  names,— the 

yeast  plant,  the  mold,  and  the  bacteria.  Some  people 
speak  of  them  all  as  germs,  but  the  name  that  fits  every 
kind  best  is  microbe,  meaning  "  small  life." 

Most  microbes  do  us  neither  harm  nor  good.  Multi- 
tudes of  them  are  indeed  the  best  friends  we  have, 
yet  very  many  others  are  our  worst  enemies.  It  is 
the  microbe  that  spoils  our  meat  and  sours  our  milk 
and  gives  us  moldy  bread.  They  rot  the  fruit  after  it 
is  picked,  and  turn  sweet  grape  juice  into  -wine  and 
vinegar.  In  all  this  they  are  so  successful  that  we  might 
call  a  piece  of  spoiled  meat  or  fruit  a  microbe  city, 


A  LITTLE  LESSON  ABOUT  LITTLE  THINGS  31 

for  millions  of  microbes  are  living  there  together  and 
working  as  fast  as  possible.  They  are  also  ready  to  go 
from  such  a  city  to  a  new  place,  and  there  the  new 
colony  grows  fast. 

Take  a  sound  apple  and  a  rotten  apple.  Crack  the 
skin  of  the  sound  one,  press  the  rotten  one  against  it, 
and  leave  them  close  together  for  a  few  days ;  then  exam- 
ine them  and  you  will  see  that  even  the  sound  apple  has 
begun  to  spoil.  A  few  microbes  promptly  went  across 
from  the  rotten  to 
the  sound  apple  and 
made  their  home 
there.  After  that 
nothing  can  save  an  yy] 

apple  except  to  cut 
off  every  bit  that  is 
spoiled;  but  even  WRERE  M]CROBES  MAy  CROSS 

then  it  will  not  keep 

long,  for  the  skin  is  broken  and  other  microbes  from 
the  air  can  get  into  it  easily. 

This  is  true  of  every  kind  of  fruit,  and  also  of  meat 
and  milk,  in  fact,  of  anything  that  can  decay.  Microbes 
move  fast  and  they  start  new  homes  in  whatever  is  near 
by.  Cooks  who  know  this  are  careful  to  protect  their 
food  from  microbes  if  they  can.  They  never  put  fresh 
meat  near  meat  that  is  spoiling,  nor  new  milk  into  a 
pitcher  with  old  milk. 


32  GOOD  HEALTH 

Cooks  also  know  that  microbes  work  fastest  in  warm 
places  and  slowest  where  it  is  cold,  and  for  this  reason, 
when  they  want  milk  to  sour  in  a  hurry,  they  put  it  in 
a  warm  place;  when  they  want  it  to  keep  sweet,  they 
put  it  in  the  ice  chest.  They  know  that  it  will  surely 
keep  if  it  is  frozen.  They  also  know  that  meat,  if  it  is 
frozen  solid,  will  keep  long  enough  to  be  carried  to  the 
North  Pole  and  back  again,  though  on  a  warm  summer 
day,  in  a  hot  kitchen,  it  may  begin  to  spoil  in  a  single 
afternoon. 

To  understand  this  we  must  know  that  microbes  do 
not  die  when  they  are  frozen.  Instead,  they  can  endure 
more  cold  than  the  strongest  man.  It  is  true,  of  course, 
that  while  they  are  frozen  they  can  do  no  more  work 
than  a  frozen  man,  but  the  difference  is  that  when  the 
freezing  is  over  the  man  is  dead,  while  the  little  microbe 
is  as  sprightly  as  ever  and  ready  for  business. 

Since  they  are  so  plucky  about  cold,  it  seems  as  if 
they  ought  to  endure  great  heat  too.  Yet  this  they  can- 
not do,  for  fire,  or  water  that  is  boiling  hot,  actually  kills 
them.  This  then  is  our  good  fortune,  for  we  manage  to 
save  some  of  our  food  by  boiling  the  microbes  that  get 
into  it. 

There  are  two  sides  to  the  secret  of  keeping  things 
from  spoiling: 

1.  Kill  the  microbes. 

2.  Put  the  food  where  no  microbes  can  get  to  it. 


A  LITTLE  LESSON  ABOUT  LITTLE  THINGS  33 

All  this  tells  about  our  food,  —  how  it  spoils  and  how 
to  keep  it  sweet.  But  you  and  I  are  far  more  important. 
We  send  microbes  into  our  lungs  every  day  with  the 
air  we  breathe;  we  put  them  into  our  mouth  with  our 
food  and  our  drink ;  we  gather  them  on  our  hands  and 
our  face  from  anything  we  touch.  Though  many  of 
these  microbes  do  us  good,  some  of  them  do  us  great 
harm.  They  may  give  us  sore  eyes,  typhoid  fever,  con- 
sumption, or  any  one  of  a  long  list  of  other  diseases 
that  make  us  miserable,  put  us  to  bed,  or  kill  us  out- 
right. They  are  the  smallest  and  the  strongest  enemies 
we  have,  and  we  need  to  know  how  to  protect  ourselves 
against  them. 

QUESTIONS 

1.  What  instrument  does  a  man  use  when  he  studies  microbes? 

2.  Where  do  microbes  live? 

3.  Do  they  help  us  or  do  us  harm? 

4.  What  do  they  do  to  milk,  meat,  fruit,  and  other  things? 

5.  Describe  what  happens  when  you  put  a  rotten  apple  against  a 
sound  one. 

6.  Do  microbes  work  faster  in  cold  or  warm  places? 

7.  What  does  freezing  do  to  microbes? 

8.  Why  do  we  boil  fruit  and  vegetables  before  we  can  them? 

9.  What  is  the  secret  of  keeping  things  from  spoiling? 
10.    Can  you  mention  any  disease  that  microbes  give? 


CHAPTER  VIII 

MICROBES  AND   KEEPING  CLEAN 

Last  winter,  in  the  town  where  I  was  staying,  there 
were  large  red  cards  fastened  to  the  houses  on  almost 
every  street.  More  than  that,  on  each  card  there  were 
seven  letters  so  long  and  so  black  that  people  who 
walked  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  street  had  no  trouble 
in  reading  the  word  "measles."  Everybody  also  knew 
what  the  sign  meant,  for  it  was  as  if  the  doctor  had 
called  aloud :  "  Measles  are  in  this  house.  If  you  come  in 
here,  you  will  be  in  danger.  You  'd  better  stay  away." 

After  the  sign  had  been  put  up,  I  noticed  that  the 
neighbors  obeyed  the  warning,  for  very  few  people  be- 
sides the  doctor  himself  went  in  and  out  of  the  house. 

The  fact  is  that  the  air  in  places  where  people  have 
had  certain  diseases  contains  so  many  microbes  of  that 
disease  that  we  are  never  willing  to  breathe  it  if  we  can 
help  it.  We  are  also  most  careful  not  to  touch  the 
people  themselves,  for  we  know  only  too  well  that 
microbes  go  as  easily  from  a  sick  child  to  a  well  child 
as  from  a  rotten  apple  to  a  sound  one.  It  is  a  more 
serious  matter,  too,  for  the  child ;  for  though  we  can 
cut  off  a  piece  of  apple  that  is  getting  rotten  to  save 

34 


MICROBES  AND  KEEPING  CLEAN  35 

the  rest  of  the  apple,  still  it  would  be  rather  hard  to  cut  off 
a  piece  of  a  child  for  the  sake  of  saving  the  rest  of  him ! 
It  is  easier  and  pleasanter  not  to  let  the  microbes  get 
a  start  in  the  first  place.  Children  do,  however,  save 
themselves  from  a  good  deal  of  danger  every  day. 

I  sometimes  wonder  what  a  room  full  of  children 
would  say  if  I  should  ask  them  why  they  try  to  keep 
clean.  Perhaps  one  would  answer,  "  Mother  makes 
me."  Another  might  say,  "  I  hate  dirt " ;  and  another 
yet,  "  Nobody  likes  me  when  I  am  dirty."  These  are 
pretty  good  reasons,  although  the  teacher  in  the  same 
room  would  probably  say,  "  I  keep  clean  because  I  want 
to  keep  well " ;  and  this,  in  fact,  is  the  most  important 
reason  of  all. 

Hands  and  faces  and  clothes  that  are  not  clean  have 
more  microbes  on  them  than  clean  hands  and  faces  and 
clothes.  I  wash  my  hands  before  I  eat  because,  if  I  do 
not  wash  them,  the  microbes  will  go  from  my  fingers  to 
my  bread  or  to  anything  else  I  touch.  They  will  enter 
my  mouth  with  my  food,  and  I  shall  swallow  every  one 
of  them.  If  disease  microbes  are  there,  they  will  go 
down  just  as  easily  as  the  others,  and  they  may  give  me 
great  trouble  afterwards. 

As  we  go  from  place  to  place  in  the  city  every  day 
our  hands  touch  things  that  other  people  have  touched, 
and  we  do  not  know  who  those  people  were.  We  grasp 
the  iron  railing  of  a  car  to  keep  ourselves  from  falling 


GOOD  HEALTH 


but  we  never  suspect  that  a  man  with  some  kind  of 
disease  microbes  on  his  hands  may  have  just  let  go  that 
same  rail  and  left  his  microbes  there. 

We  push  a  shop  door  open  with  both  hands ;  yet  who 
knows  what  sort  of  woman  with  what  sort  of  disease  may 

have  pushed  it  open 
two  minutes  before  we 
came?  Thus  in  a  hun- 
dred ways  we  may 
gather  up  the  worst  of 
the  city  microbes.  We 
may  then  reach  home 
barely  in  time  for  din- 
ner and,  if  we  forget 
to  wash  our  hands,  we 
give  all  sorts  of  mi- 
crobes from  all  sorts  of 
people  the  chance  to 
go  into  our  mouths 
with  our  food. 

Wearing  gloves  is  quite  a  help,  although  even  those 
who  wear  them  are  sometimes  very  careless.  I  have 
seen  a  gentle-looking,  well-dressed  woman  with  gloves 
on  slip  a  penny  between  her  lips  for  a  moment.  It  was 
a  dangerous  thing  to  do,  because  who  could  tell  what 
hand  had  held  the  penny  before  she  held  it,  or  what 
kind  of  microbes  might  be  on  it  ? 


WHERE  MICROBES  MAY  BE  EXCHANGED 


MICROBES  AND  KEEPING  CLEAN  37 

If  her  lips  had  been  cracked  or  chapped,  and  if  the 
microbes  on  the  penny  had  been  of  the  dangerous  kind, 
she  might  have  caught  a  dangerous  disease.  Lips  that 
are  slightly  cracked  are  like  apples  that  have  their  skins 
broken ;  if  disease  microbes  get  against  them,  they  settle 
there  at  once  and  cause  trouble. 

We  must  not  forget  that  most  microbes  are  harmless, 
but  we  must  be  sure  to  remember  that  some  of  them  do 
us  such  great  harm  that  the  safest  thing  is  not  to  run 
any  risks.  It  may  be  that  the  well-dressed  woman  whom 
I  saw  had  never  heard  of  microbes,  for  some  people  are 
quite  behind  the  times  in  this  matter. 

Clothes  need  to  be  clean  as  well  as  hands,  —  also  houses, 
schoolrooms,  cars,  and  churches.  The  cleaner  such  places 
are,  the  safer  we  shall  be;  for  wherever  people  live  or 
go,  wherever  they  breathe  the  air  or  die,  there  we  are 
likely  to  find  things  that  are  soiled  and  microbes  that 
are  multiplying.  Since  we  know  all  this  we  must  try  to 
keep  clean  every  day;  we  must  live  in  clean  houses  for 
the  sake  of  keeping  well. 

QUESTIONS 

1.  What  does  a  warning  sign  on  a  house  sometimes  seem  to  say? 

2.  Why  are  we  careful  not  to  touch  certain  people? 

3.  What  is  one  great  reason  for  washing  our  hands  and  keeping  clean  ? 

4.  How  may  microbes  get  from  the  hands  to  the  mouth? 
5-  Mention  ways  in  which  microbes  may  be  exchanged? 


CHAPTER  IX 

DUST  AND   CLEANLINESS 

When  the  wind  blows,  clouds  of  dust  whirl  down  the 
street,  and  it  seems  as  if  you  could  hardly  draw  your 
breath. 

You  turn  your  head  away,  press  your  lips  together, 
and  try  not  to  breathe  much,  even  through  your  nose ; 
yet,  in  spite  of  all  that,  so  much  dust  is  in  your  mouth 
that  you  almost  taste  it,  and  so  much  is  in  your  eyes  that 
they  ache  and  grow  red.  Tears  run  down  your  cheeks 
even  though  you  are  not  crying.  You  cough  and  use 
your  handkerchief,  and  after  you  reach  home  you  may 
feel  as  if  you  had  caught  a  hard  cold. 

There  is  reason  for  this,  for  many  kinds  of  dust  have 
edges  and  corners  and  rough  sides.  A  speck  of  coal 
dust  from  the  engine  really  scratches  the  delicate  inside 
skin  of  the  eye  with  its  corners,  though  the  hands  and 
face  cannot  feel  them.  As  for  the  lungs,  they  are  so 
much  more  delicate  that  even  ordinary  dust  in  an 
ordinary  home  is  bad  for  them. 

If  you  want  to  know  whether  or  not  there  is  dust  in 
the  air  you  are  breathing,  look  at  a  band  of  sunshine  as 

38 


DUST  AND  CLEANLINESS 


39 


it  streams  in  through  the  window.  In  almost  every  room, 
in  this  sunshine,  you  will  see  hundreds  and  thousands 
of  dust-specks  that  look  like  tiny  air  ships  floating  up 
and  down  on  the  sunbeam,  —  fairy  ships  of  shining  gold. 


A  DUST  STORM 

Now  pick  up  a  corner  of  the  rug  and  shake  it,  or  draw 
a  heavy  curtain  back  and  forth  on  its  pole,  and  look  at 
the  band  of  sunshine  again.  Suddenly  the  little  fleet  is 
ten  thousand  times  as  big.  Thousands  and  thousands  of 
those  air  ships  are  crowding  each  other  and  racing  on 
the  stream  of  sunlight.  It  is  a  beautiful  sight,  although, 


GOOD  HEALTH 


of  course,  it  is  not  good  for  any  pair  of  lungs  to  inhale 
such  air  as  that.    We  must  remember  that  dust  is  just  as 
thick  everywhere  else  in  the  room  as  it  is  in  the  sunshine. 
(/:  ,/>v.r  After  all,  however,  the  worst  thing 

about  dust  is  the  microbes  that  are 
in  it ;  and  it  is  easy  to  see  that  they 
are  always  thickest  where  the  dust 
is  thickest,  for  instance,  in  the  streets 
of  a  city.  People  who  know  this  are 
the  ones  who  take  the  greatest  pains 
to  keep  dust  and  microbes  out  of 
their  lungs  and  out  of  their  homes. 
They  know  that  any  wind 
strong  enough  to  whirl  the 
least  dust  along  is  quite  strong 
enough  to  carry  whole  armies  of 
microbes  from  one  place  to  another. 
These  microbes  get  into  the  air 
from  the  skins  of 
people  who  have 
skin  diseases;  they 
are  blown  by  mil- 
lions from  every 
heap  of  dry  rubbish 
that  you  see,  from  garbage  cans  and  sewers,  from  dead 
animals  and  soiled  clothes.  In  fact,  they  multiply  fastest 
in  unclean  places. 


STIRRING  UP  DUST  AND  MICROBES 


DUST  AND  CLEANLINESS  4! 

Microbes  that  give  consumption  are  thick  in  the  saliva 
of  men  and  women  who  have  that  disease.  These  peo- 
ple are  often  careless.  They  spit  on  the  street,  where 
the  saliva  dries  after  a  while ;  passers-by  step  on  it  and 
crush  it ;  ladies  brush  it  around  with  their  skirts ;  it  gets 
into  the  air ;  the  wind  blows  it  through  our  streets  into 
our  homes  and  our  schoolhouses ;  it  settles  in  our  car- 
pets and  our  curtains;  we  breathe  it  into  our  lungs, 
and  if  we  are  not  very  healthy  the  microbes  stay  there 
and  end  by  giving  us  the  disease  itself. 

This  is  such  a  dreadful  prospect  that  some  cities  have 
made  laws  against  spitting  in  public  places.  Some 
people  still  do  it,  however,  and  that  is  why  we  should 
not  breathe  the  dust  in  the  street,  and  why  we  should 
banish  it  from  our  schoolrooms  and  our  homes. 

Nevertheless,  in  spite  of  all  we  can  do,  it  will  get  in 
sometimes ;  then  comes  the  important  question  of  dust- 
ing. Some  people  have  a  queer  way  of  doing  it.  I  have 
seen  them  go  round  switching  things  with  a  feather 
duster.  The  dust  flies  up  at  once  and  floats  in  the  sun- 
beam, while  the  woman  herself  breathes  it  until  it  settles 
down  again.  If  the  windows  are  open  some  of  it  gets 
out  of  doors;  otherwise  it  stays  here  and  there  in  the 
room.  It  is  scattered,  that  is  all. 

A  soft,  damp,  dusting  cloth  is  better  than  a  feather 
duster;  but  if  this  is  likely  to  injure  anything,  use  a  dry 
cloth  and  shake  it  out  of  the  window  very  often. 


42  GOOD  HEALTH 

In  a  certain  school  in  Worcester,  Massachusetts,  there 
is  what  they  call  the  "  Health  Brigade."  Here  the  chil- 
dren take  turns  in  wearing  the  uniforms  and  in  doing 
the  dusting.  They  wait  eagerly  for  their  turn  to  come 
around,  and  they  keep  the  rooms  so  clean  with  their 
damp  dusting  cloths,  that  in  1902,  when  they  did  their 
work,  fewer  children  were  ill  than  ever  before  since  the 
beginning  of  the  school. 

Damp  dusters  and  school  children  did  better  work  in 
that  school  building  than  feather  dusters  and  janitors. 

QUESTIONS 

1.  What  happens  to  people  caught  in  a  dust  storm? 

2.  Why  does  dust  in  the  eyes  start  the  tears? 

3.  How  can  you  see  whether  or  not  there  is  dust  in  the  air  of  a 
room? 

4.  If  it  is  thick  in  the  sunshine,  what  do  you  decide  about  the  whole 
room? 

5.  Why  should  rugs  be  shaken  out  of  doors? 

6.  What  is  the  worst  thing  about  dust? 

7.  How  do  microbes  get  into  the  air? 

8.  Why  is  there  a  law  against  spitting? 

9.  What  is  the  best  way  to  dust? 

10.   Tell  what  the  "  Health  Brigade  "  of  Worcester  did. 


CHAPTER  X 

TOBACCO   CHEWING  AND   CLEANLINESS 

Last  winter,  on  a  very  cold  day,  a  friend  of  mine  met 
a  farmer  who  had  just  driven  in  from  the  country,  and  he 
saw  a  brown  icicle  a  quarter  of  an  inch  long  hanging  from 
each  end  of  his  mustache.  It  did  not  make  the  man  look 
handsome,  and  it  showed  what  he  had  been  doing. 

Several  years  ago  I  knew  an  old  man  who  had  been 
quite  a  dandy  when  he  was  young,  but  even  then  he 
chewed  tobacco.  He  was  so  careful  and  neat  about  it, 
however,  that  no  one  thought  he  did  it  for  a  moment, 
not  even  the  woman  he  married.  Still  as  he  grew  older 
he  grew  careless  too,  and  when  I  knew  him  he  was  such 
an  untidy  old  man  that  he  showed  every  one  of  the 
chewing  signs.  His  dreadful  tobacco  breath  matched 
the  looks  of  his  few  wretched  teeth,  and  the  stains  on  his 
shirt  front  looked  as  if  they  came  from  the  brown  edges 
of  his  twisted  mouth.  An  old  man  who  is  not  tidy  is 
certainly  one  of  the  most  unattractive  things  on  earth. 

tA  plug  of  tobacco  is  brown  and  dry,  and  it  is  pressed 
into  a  square,  hard  block  which  men  carry  around  in  their 
pockets.    When  they  hold  it  in  their  hands  or  bite  off  a 
piece  it  does  not  look  as  if  it  could  do  any  more  harm  than 
" 


44  GOOD  HEALTH 

a  piece  of  chocolate ;  but  thousands  of  young  men  have 
grown  into  untidy  old  men  because  they  have  used  it. 

The  places  where  they  do  their  chewing  are  no  cleaner 
than  the  men  themselves.  Indeed,  they  match  them 
exactly.  Ask  your  father  to  take  you  to  such  a  place  for 
a  moment  sometime.  Perhaps  it  will  be  a  crowded  room 
in  a  city,  or  a  country  station,  or  a  back-alley  store. 
Wherever  it  is,  look  at  the  floor.  In  such  places  you 
will  see  great  damp  spots  which  tell  the  story  at  once. 
Men  who  gather  in  such  places  generally  use  tobacco, 
and  everybody  knows  that  men  who  chew  have  to  empty 
their  mouths  constantly.  The  tobacco  makes  them  do  it. 
For  this  reason,  wherever  a  tobacco  chewer  sits  or  stands, 
there  you  see  the  signs  of  his  occupation.  The  floor 
shows  it  and  the  spittoon  shows  it,  though  the  man  him- 
self is  not  often  ashamed.  Ladies  who  walk  that  way 
have  to  hold  up  their  skirts  to  keep  them  clean,  but  he 
keeps  on  with  his  untidy  work  of  spitting  tobacco  juice. 

There  is  one  great  difference  between  the  man  who 
chews  his  plug  and  the  cow  that  chews  her  cud.  The 
cow  is  neat  and  clean  about  it  and  the  man  is  not.  The 
cow  does  not  soil  the  floor  or  use  a  spittoon ;  she  has  no 
brown  spots  at  the  corners  of  her  mouth  and  her  breath 
is  sweet  and  clean. 

Spitting  is  so  disgusting  that  even  the  word  itself  is 
disagreeable  and  we  hate  to  use  it.  Still  there  is  no  other 
word  that  is  quite  so  easy  to  understand. 


TOBACCO  CHEWING  AND  CLEANLINESS  45 

A  few  years  ago  those  who  used  tobacco  were  a 
nuisance  everywhere.  No  law  had  been  made  to  check 
them,  and  people  who  wanted  to  keep  clean  put  spittoons 
in  every  public  place,  —  in  railroad  stations  and  business 
places,  in  beautiful  homes,  in  the  House  of  Representa- 
tives, in  the  courthouse  where  the  judge  sat,  and  in  the 
jail  where  the  prisoner  went.  There  were  spittoons  all 
over  America,  and  every  one.  of  them  was  untidy ;  yet 
for  years  this  was  all  that  could  be  done. 

Some  people  do  not  understand  why  you  and  I  object 
to  their  use  of  tobacco  and  they  think  that  if  they  need  to 
empty  their  mouths  very  often,  we  should  not  try  to  stop 
them.  The  truth  is  that  we  object  to  the  man  and  to 
what  he  does  because  we  cannot  keep  the  air  clean  when 
he  is  around. 

Our  chapter  on  Dust  and  Cleanliness  explained  this. 
Often  a  spittoon  is  tipped  over,  and  what  is  left  on  the 
floor  dries  after  a  while.  It  is  trampled  on,  turned  to 
powder,  blown  into  the  air,  and  you  and  I  cannot  help 
ourselves  ;  we  have  to  breathe  it.  We  have  to  take  into 
our  clean  lungs  the  dried  tobacco  juice  that  has  come 
from  the  mouth  of  the  unclean  tobacco  chewer. 

At  last,  however,  some  cities  have  passed  laws  against 
spitting.  Better  yet,  these  laws  are  printed  in  large 
letters  and  pasted  up  in  railroad  stations  and  in  electric 
cars,  so  that  now  people  cannot  empty  their  mouths 
everywhere  whenever  they  please.  In  New  York  City 


46  GOOD  HEALTH 

men  are  fined  or  put  in  prison  for  spitting  on  the  floor 
of  trains  and  stations  and  other  public  places. 

What  I  am  going  to  tell  you  now  is  n't  very  important, 
but  it  is  interesting.  There  are  tribes  in  Africa  that  eat 
their  enemies  if  they  get  a  chance,  but  I  have  been  told 
that  these  cannibals  do  not  like  the  flesh  of  a  man  who 
has  used  tobacco.  They  say  it  has  a  dreadful  taste.  Per- 
haps it  tastes  as  his  breath  smells.  It  is  not  necessary  for 
us  to  know  this,  for  there  are  no  people  in  America  who 
eat  human  flesh. 

QUESTIONS 

1.  What  are  some  of  the  signs  of  a  tobacco  chewer? 

2.  As  the  tobacco  chewer  grows  older  does  he  seem  to  grow  more 
tidy  or  more  untidy  in  the  way  he  uses  tobacco  ? 

3.  How  does  a  plug  of  tobacco  look? 

4.  Why  do  we  object  to  having  a  man  chew? 

5.  What  have  some  cities  done  about  spitting? 


CHAPTER  XI 

WHY  AND  HOW  WE  NEED  TO  SLEEP 

Once  in  a  great  battle  on  the  river  Nile  some  British 
soldiers  had  to  be  awake  so  long  and  work  so  hard  by 
day  and  by  night  that  at  last  some  of  them  fell  asleep 
on  the  deck  of  the  ship  in  the  midst  of  the  fighting. 

They  wanted  to  keep  awake  and  they  tried  not  to 
sleep,  but  they  could  not  help  themselves. 

In  another  battle  the  captain  of  a  man-of-war  fell  asleep 
too,  and  the  strange  part  of  it  was  that  although  a  great 
cannon  was  firing  all  the  time  only  six  feet  away  from 
him,  he  slept  two  hours  and  did  not  hear  a  sound. 

Soldiers  have  done  even  stranger  things  than  that. 
They  have  fallen  asleep  while  they  were  marching  along, 
and  they  have  walked  several  steps  while  they  were 
asleep.  Of  course,  they  wakened  very  soon,  but  they  did 
march  and  sleep  at  the  same  time. 

Children  who  work  in  factories  often  have  just  as 
much  trouble  about  keeping  awake  when  they  are  very 
tired.  They  try  with  all  their  might  not  to  go  to  sleep 
while  they  are  working,  because  they  know  they  will  be 
punished  if  they  do ;  but  suddenly,  before  they  know  it, 
they  are  fast  asleep. 

47 


48  GOOD   HEALTH 

Now  the  soldiers,  the  captain,  and  the  children  all 
had  the  same  trouble.  They  had  worked  too  hard  and 
slept  too  little ;  the  brain  was  tired  out,  and  under  such 
circumstances  it  sometimes  goes  to  sleep  even  when  we 
tell  it  not  to.  Whenever  we  say  we  are  sleepy  we  mean 
that  the  brain  needs  to  rest. 

Ask  your  father  to  open  and  shut  his  hand  as  fast  as 
he  can,  and  beg  him  to  keep  on  doing  it  as  long  as  he 
can.  After  a  while  he  will  tell  you  that  his  fingers  are 
stiff,  and  you  will  notice  that  they  move  more  and  more 
slowly.  Then  he  will  say  that  he  is  getting  very  tired. 
If  he  keeps  on  long  enough,  at  last  his  hand  will  be  so 
tired  that  his  fingers  will  not  obey  him.  They  will  not 
move  even  if  he  tries  with  all  his  might  to  make  them. 
The  brain  behaves  in  just  this  way  when  it  is  very  tired ; 
it  cannot  keep  on  working  even  if  we  want  it  to. 

We  all  know  that  thinking  is  the  work  that  the  brain 
does.  It  begins  when  we  first  wake  in  the  morning,  and 
it  does  not  stop  until  we  go  to  sleep  at  night.  It  does  not 
rest  an  instant  all  day  unless  we  take  a  nap;  for  from 
first  to  last  it  is  thinking  about  toys  and  play,  about 
school  and  kites,  dolls  and  balls,  and  all  about  our  duties 
and  our  fun.  No  wonder  it  gets  tired.  No  wonder  we 
have  to  sleep  a  great  deal  to  give  it  the  rest  it  needs. 

The  truth  is  that  we  spend  more  time  in  sleeping  than 
in  eating  or  playing  or  studying ;  and  we  are  wise  in  this 
because  the  work  the  brain  does  is  more  important  than 


WHY  AND  HOW  WE  NEED  TO  SLEEP 


49 


the  work  of  any  other  part  of  the  body,  and  sleep  is  the 
only  thing  that  rests  it. 

If  you  lie    down   and   are   not   asleep,  the   brain  is 
not   really    resting.      If    you    dream,    it    is    working   a 


Too  TIRED  TO  STAY  AWAKE 


little;  but  it  rests  perfectly  when  you  sleep  perfectly. 

While  the  brain  stops  working  the  rest  of  the  body  is 
not  idle.  In  fact,  one  of  the  important  things  to  remem- 
ber is  that  children  grow  fast  while  they  are  asleep. 

You  can  prove  this  by  noticing  how  much  a  baby 
sleeps  and  how  fast  he  grows. 


50  GOOD  HEALTH 

If  you  have  a  chance,  you  might  visit  the  same  baby 
once  a  month  for  a  year.  Each  time  you  will  see  that  he 
is  bigger.  His  mother  will  also  tell  you  that  he  does 
nothing  but  sleep  and  eat,  and  from  this  you  know  that 
he  must  be  growing  fast  while  he  sleeps.  It  is  a  fact, 


1 


A  GOOD  POSITION  FOR  SLEEPING 

indeed,  that  babies  who  sleep  the  most  grow  the  fastest, 
and,  as  a  rule,  this  is  true  of  all  children. 

Though  we  can  sleep  even  when  we  are  not  lying 
down,  still  we  get  the  best  rest  when  we  are  stretched 
out  on  a  comfortable  bed. 

Several  things  about  the  bed  must  be  looked  after. 
It  should  be  flat  and  smooth.  The  pillow  should  not  be 
large,  because  the  higher  the  head  is  raised  the  harder 
the  heart  has  to  work  to  send  the  blood  into  it,  and  we 
ought  to  give  the  heart  as  little  work  as  possible  at  night. 


WHY  AND  HOW  WE  NEED  TO  SLEEP  51 

Some  people  use  a  thin  hair  pillow,  and  others  who  are 
quite  as  wise  use  none  at  all.  Most  people  understand 
the  laws  of  oxygen  and  carbon  dioxid  so  well  that  they 
never  cover  their  heads  with  the  bedclothes  when  they 
sleep.  They  wish  pure  air  and  plenty  of  oxygen  instead 
of  impure  air  and  little  oxygen  under  the  bedding. 

While  we  are  sleeping  we  have  a  grand  chance  to  help 
decide  whether  our  backs  shall  be  straight  or  crooked. 
If  we  always  lie  as  we  should  we  shall  be  helping  our 
backs  to  be  straight,  because  children's  bones  are  not 
very  hard,  and  the  oftener  we  bend  them  in  one  particular 
way  the  more  likely  they  are  to  stay  in  that  shape.  But  a 
boy  who  is  sure  that  he  wants  a  straight  body  will  help 
himself  even  while  he  is  asleep,  and  when  he  has  grown 
to  be  a  man  he  is  sure  to  be  as  straight  as  a  soldier. 

QUESTIONS 

1.  What  happened  to  tired  soldiers  on  the  river  Nile? 

2.  What  happens  sometimes  to  tired-out  children? 

3.  Why  do  people  sometimes  go  to  sleep  when  they  don't  wish  to? 

4.  What  sort  of  work  does  the  brain  do? 

5.  When  does  the  brain  rest? 

6.  Why  do  we  need  to  spend  more  time  in  sleeping  than  in  eating, 
playing,  or  studying? 

7.  What  does  the  body  of  a  child  do  while  he  sleeps? 

8.  In  what  position  can  we  sleep  the  best? 

9.  Why  should  the  pillow  be  low? 

IO.    Why  do  we  leave  the  head  uncovered? 


CHAPTER  XII 
SOME  RULES  ABOUT  SLEEPING 

Sleep  is  so  important  that  when  a  man  is  ill  the  doctor 
often  tells  the  nurse  not  to  waken  him  even  for  his 
medicine  or  his  food.  He  says  that  sleep  will  do  him 
more  good  than  anything  else. 

A  doctor  in  Stockholm,  Sweden,  studied  the  health  of 
children  and  found  that  those  who  did  not  sleep  enough 
were  ill  the  oftenest,  while  those  who  slept  the  most  were 
generally  the  healthiest.  It  is  the  same  with  children  in 
other  countries. 

Ask  the  members  of  your  class  about  it,  and  I  think 
you  will  find  that  the  ones  who  read  and  spell  and 
learn  their  lessons  best  are  the  ones  who  sleep  the  most. 
You  might  see  what  they  say  about  it.  Perhaps  you 
have  noticed  that  you  yourself  are  always  happiest  and 
bravest  and  kindest,  that  you  learn  your  lessons  the 
easiest  and  recite  them  the  best,  and  that  you  have  the 
most  fun  with  games  of  all  kinds  after  you  have  slept 
well.  It  is  so  with  everybody;  we  do  everything  best 
after  we  have  slept  best. 

But  there  are  some  people  in  every  town  and  city  who 
cannot  sleep  much,  no  matter  how  hard  they  try. 

52 


- 


SOME  RULES  ABOUT  SLEEPING  53 

I  knew  a  woman  once  who  had  only  slept  five  hours 
that  week,  and  she  said  nobody  knew  how  she  suffered. 
When  she  did  sleep  again  she  was  the  happiest  woman 
you  ever  saw. 

There  are  certain  things  that  help  many  people  to  go 
to  sleep.  The  patter  of  rain  on  the  roof  is  one,  the  rustle 
of  leaves  is  another,  and  the  gentle  singing  of  a  lullaby  is 
still  another.  All  these  things  help  because  they  keep  on 
without  much  change.  They  are  what  we  call  monotonous. 
The  sound  goes  on  in  the  same  tone,  and  it  is  soothing. 
But  when  the  sound  stops  the  people  waken  at  once. 

Perhaps  you  have  seen  how  quickly  an  old  man 
stiffens  his  neck  and  sits  up  straight  when  the  minister 
stops  preaching.  It  is  the  same  with  a  baby  too  some- 
times. He  sleeps  while  the  nurse  is  singing,  but  when 
she  stops  he  wakens  and  begins  to  cry. 

People  know  that  monotonous  things  make  them 
sleepy,  so  when  they  are  excited  or  tired  and  cannot 
sleep  they  try  all  sorts  of  schemes  that  are  monotonous. 
Sometimes  they  count  slowly  from  one  to  one  hundred ; 
then  they  count  backwards  from  one  hundred  to  one. 
Sometimes  they  repeat  a  verse  of  poetry  over  and  over 
again,  or  they  say  to  themselves,/' Sleep,  sleep,  sleep," 

Intil  at  last  they  go  to  sleep. 

Once  when  I  could  not  sleep  I  learned  to  say  the 
alphabet  from  both  ends  to  the  middle,  like  this :  a  z  b  y  c 
xdwevfugthsirjqkplomn.  At  the  same  time 


54  GOOD  HEALTH 

I  learned  to  say  it  from  the  middle  out  again,  like  this: 
mnlokpjqirhsgtf  uevdwcxbyaz.  That 
seems  a  foolish  business  now,  but  it  helped  me  to  go  to 
sleep  many  times  in  those  days. 

Children  do  not  lie  awake  very  often.  For  them  the 
principal  questions  are  when  to  go  to  bed  and  how  long 
to  sleep.  Or  we  might  put  it  this  way:  if  a  man  or  a 
child  wants  his  brain  to  work  for  him  in  the  best  way  it 
can,  and  as  fast  as  it  can,  how  many  hours  ought  he  to 
sleep  each  night  ?  Merely  to  be  in  bed  is  not  enough. 

Babies  need  more  sleep  than  young  men,  and  people 
who  are  feeble  need  more  than  those  who  are  strong. 
From  this  we  see  that  there  can  be  no  very  definite 
rules.  Here  are  some  pretty  good  ones,  however. 

1.  Children  four  years  old  need  to  sleep 
about  twelve  hours. 

2.  Children  seven  years  old  need  to  sleep 
about  eleven  hours. 

3.  Children  eight  and  nine  years  old  need 
to  sleep  about  ten  and  a  half  hours. 

4.  Children  ten  and  eleven  years  old  need 
to  sleep  about  ten  hours. 

5.  Children  twelve  years  old  need  to  sleep 
about  nine  hours. 

Even  grown-up  people  are  healthier  as  a  rule  and  can 
use  their  brains  and  bodies  better  when  they  sleep  seven 
and  a  half  or  eight  hours  a  night. 


SOME  RULES  ABOUT  SLEEPING  ^  55 

By  using  this  table  you  ought  to  be  able  to  decide  for 
yourself  how  many  hours  of  sleep  you  need  each  night. 
Notice  whether  you  are  wide-awake  or  sleepy  when  it  is 
time  for  you  to  get  up  in  the  morning.  If  you  are 
sleepy,  you  must  go  to  bed  earlier;  you  need  more 
sleep,  and  the  time  to  get  it  is  in  the  evening,  not  in 
the  morning. 

Probably  you  are  nine  or  ten  years  old.  In  this  case 
you  ought  to  sleep  ten  hours  or  more  every  night. 

If  you  are  healthy  and  strong,  and  if  you  are  wide- 
awake in  the  morning  so  that  nobody  has  to  waken  you 
for  breakfast,  then  perhaps  ten  hours  will  be  enough. 
Let  your  father  decide  about  that. 

I  know  three  children  who  go  to  the  grammar  school. 
They  are  about  the  best  scholars  in  their  classes,  but 
they  never  have  any  "  home  work  "  to  do.  They  do  all 
their  studying  in  the  schoolroom.  When  they  are  not 
in  school  they  are  generally  playing  out  of  doors  in  the 
pure  air.  One  reason  why  they  get  along  so  well  with- 
out doing  "  home  work  "  is  because  they  sleep  so  much. 

Elizabeth  is  nine  years  old.  She  sleeps  ten  and  a  half 
hours  almost  every  night.  James  is  eleven,  but  he  is 
strong,  and  after  he  has  slept  nine  and  a  half  hours  he 
is  wide-awake.  He  cannot  sleep  any  more  and  his 
father  lets  him  get  up.  Fred  is  thirteen.  He  is  not 
quite  so  strong  as  James,  so  he  sleeps  ten  hours  and  he 
is  getting  stronger  every  month. 


56  GOOD  HEALTH 

All  three  children  are  healthy,  and  are  growing  fast; 
they  are  good  students  and  they  are  full  of  fun  too. 
They  think  that  sleeping  is  like  putting  money  in  the 
bank  of  health.  I  think  so  too. 

I  shall  now  give  you  three  rules. 

1.  Sleep  all  you  can.    This  will  make  you 
brighter  and  bigger. 

2.  Go  to  bed  and  get  up  at  regular  hours. 
This  will  help  you  to  get  sleep  enough. 

'3.  Unless  you  are  ill  do  not  lie  in  bed  many 
minutes  after  you  wake  in  the  morning. 

QUESTIONS 

1.  What  does  a  doctor  sometimes  advise  about  sleep? 

2.  What  did  a  doctor  find  out  about  school  children  in  Stockholm? 

3.  What  do  your  classmates  say  about  sleep? 

4.  When  do  you  feel  best,  after  much  or  little  sleep? 

5.  What  sort  of  things  help  to  put  people  to  sleep? 

6.  If  a  child  or  a  man  wants  his  brain  to  be  as  useful  as  possible, 
what  important  thing  must  he  see  to? 

7.  According  to  the  rules,  how  many  hours'  sleep  do  you  need  every 
night? 

8.  Tell  about  the  three  children  who  slept  so  much  and  had  no 
"  home  work  "  to  do. 

9.  Give  the  rules  of  sleep  that  end  the  chapter. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

HABITS  OF  SLEEPING 

Next  door  to  where  I  am  sitting  and  writing  there  is 
a  little  girl  seven  years  old.  She  cannot  go  to  sleep 
unless  her  mother  sits  in  the  room  with  her  and  unless 
the  gas  is  burning.  If  her  mother  is  not  there,  she  lies 
awake  and  screams. 

Just  across  the  road  in  another  house  is  a  boy  five 
years  old.  Every  evening  when  bedtime  comes  his 
mother  says,  "  Now  for  bed."  Generally  he  looks  un- 
happy because  he  likes  to  play;  but  he  trots  along. 
His  mother  puts  him  in  bed,  tucks  him  in,  says  good 
night,  turns  out  the  gas,  and  goes  away,  and  in  five 
minutes  he  is  fast  asleep.  He  never  lies  awake  to 
scream  for  his  mother,  and  he  cannot  sleep  if  there  is 
a  light  in  the  room. 

Some  mothers  hold  their  babies,  and  rock  and  sing 
them  to  sleep.  They  do  this  so  regularly  that  after  a 
while  it  turns  out  that  such  babies  cannot  sleep  unless 
the  mother  does  hold  and  rock  and  sing  to  them.  Other 
mothers  put  the  baby  into  a  comfortable  bed,  give  him 
a  little  pat,  smile  at  him,  and  go  away ;  and  these  babies 
fall  asleep  just  as  soon  as  the  others.  It  almost  seems 

57 


58  GOOD  HEALTH 

as  if  there  must  be  different  kinds  of  babies  in  different 
families.  But  this  is  not  so ;  the  real  secret  of  the  sleep- 
ing is  that  we  get  used  to  things  and  then  we  find  it 
hard  to  change. 

That  is  why  the  little  girl  next  door  needs  her  mother 
and  the  light  to  help  her  sleep.  She  is  used  to  them.  It 
is  the  same  with  the  boy,  with  the  baby  that  needs  to  be 
rocked,  and  with  the  baby  that  goes  to  sleep  quietly  on  the 
bed.  Their  mothers  have  trained  them,  and  each  has  his 
own  particular  habit.  Older  people  train  us  when  we  are 
babies,  but  when  we  grow  older  we  must  train  ourselves. 

You  might  try  this  plan.  Go  to  bed  every  night  at 
exactly  the  same 'hour  and  see  whether  you  don't  fall 
asleep  more  quickly  each  night. 

Captain  Barclay  was  a  man  who  walked  a  thousand 
miles  in  a  thousand  hours.  Of  course  every  moment 
was  precious  and  he  did  not  want  to  waste  any  time 
getting  to  sleep.  So  he  trained  himself  until  he  found 
that  he  could  fall  asleep  the  moment  he  lay  down.  As 
soon  as  he  wakened  he  began  walking  again. 

We  can  help  ourselves  to  waken  in  the  same  way. 
In  some  families  the  first  thing  you  hear  in  the  morning 
is  a  loud  call  at  the  foot  of  the  stairs:  "Children! 
Children!  It's  time  to  get  up."  Then  after  a  while 
somebody  says:  "I  don't  see  what's  the  matter  with 
those  children.  I  suppose  I  must  go  up  and  shake  them 
all  out  of  bed." 


HABITS  OF  SLEEPING 


59 


Some  children  have  to  be  spoken  to  and  shaken  and 
called  over  and  over  again  before  they  are  awake  enough 
to  get  up.  Other  children  waken  at  the  first  call  and  get 
up  without  any  trouble.  Perhaps  one  child  has  not  slept 
enough,  but  very  often  the 
real  reason  is  that  they  have 
different  habits  of  waking. 
If  any  one  gets  into  the 
habit  of  hearing  the  first  call 
and  getting  up  at  once,  he 
will  always  hear  it;  but  if 
he  pays  no  attention  to  it, 
and  stays  in  bed,  and  takes 
another  nap,  after  a  few  days 
he  will  not  hear  it  at  all. 

It  is  easy  for  any 
man,  woman,  or  child 
gradually  to  form  this 
habit.  I  have  done  it 
myself. 

Every  winter  when 
our  man  Crosby  goes 
to  the  basement  and  shakes  the  furnace  with  all  his 
might  for  the  first  time,  I  waken  with  a  jump  and  think 
that  the  world  is  coming  to  an  end.  Then  I  remember 
what  is  happening  and  go  to  sleep  again.  The  second 
morning  I  am  not  so  frightened,  and  I  fall  asleep  at 


FORMING  A  HABIT 


60  GOOD  HEALTH 

once.  The  third  morning  I  only  half  hear  the  noise  in 
my  dreams,  and  after  that  I  sleep  through  all  his  shaking 
and  poking  without  so  much  as  turning  over. 

Now  if  I  had  stayed  awake  those  first  few  mornings,  I 
should  have  started  the  habit  of  waking  at  five  o'clock, 
and  this  would  have  kept  me  miserable  all  winter;  but 
instead,  I  made  myself  go  to  sleep,  until  now  that  is  my 
habit  and  I  like  it.  I  trained  myself  to  it. 

It  is  the  same  with  an  alarm  clock.  If  you  go  to  sleep 
again  each  time  after  the  alarm  has  sounded,  in  a  few 
mornings  you  will  train  yourself  not  to  hear  it  at  all.  In 
that  way  children  train  themselves  not  to  hear  the  first  call 
to  get  up.  If  they  have  slept  long  enough,  they  ought  to 
get  out  of  bed  at  once.  Still,  all  I  am  trying  to  show 
just  now  is  that  we  can  make  our  own  sleep  habits.  We 
can  train  ourselves  in  the  opposite  way  too. 

If  we  heed  the  alarm  clock,  and  stay  awake,  and  get 
up,  it  will  always  awaken  us. 

It  is  strange,  but  we  can  train  ourselves  to  hear  some 
noises  and  not  to  hear  others.  The  things  we  attend  to 
are  the  ones  that  awaken  us.  A  good  nurse  may  sleep 
through  a  thunderstorm,  or  a  dreadful  fire  alarm,  but 
when  her  patient  groans,  or  when  she  only  whispers  her 
name,  the  nurse  wakens  in  an  instant.  She  has  trained 
herself  to  listen  to  that  one  particular  sound. 

Some  people  are  trained  by  the  place  where  they  live. 
I  have  a  friend  who  cannot  sleep  when  she  goes  to  the 


HABITS  OF  SLEEPING  6 1 

country.  She  said  one  day,  "  You  see  it  is  so  awfully 
quiet  out  here  in  the  country,  that  it  keeps  me  awake." 
In  Boston  she  sleeps  soundly,  but  her  home  is  on  a  noisy 
street.  She  misses  the  noise  just  as  a  baby  misses  his 
mother's  singing. 

A  man  once  lived  near  a  noisy  mill  that  ran  at  night, 
and  after  a  while  he  could  not  sleep  unless  the  mill  wheel 
was  going. 

It  is  the  other  way  with  most  of  us.  We  need  the 
quiet  for  our  sleep.  When  country  people  go  to  the 
noisy  city  it  is  often  many  nights  before  they  sleep  well. 

From  all  this  we  learn  that  after  doing  a  thing  in  one 
way  for  many  times  something  within  us  seems  to  decide 
that  we  shall  do  it  in  the  same  way  every  time.  That  is 
why  it  is  so  important  for  us  to  start  our  sleep  habits  in 
the  right  direction. 

QUESTIONS 

1.  Describe  the  different  ways  in  which  children  go  to  sleep. 

2.  What  is  it  that  makes  the  difference? 

3.  What  did  Captain  Barclay  train  himself  to  do? 

4.  What  difference  is  there  in  the  way  children  waken? 

5.  Why  do  some  children  waken  promptly  while  others  have  to 
be  called  over  and  over  again? 

6.  How  can  I  train  myself  to  sleep? 

7-    How  can  I  train  myself  to  waken  at  the  slightest  sound? 

8.  What  is  a  good  nurse  able  to  do  about  waking  and  sleeping? 

9.  Why  should  we  have  good  habits  of  sleep? 


CHAPTER   XIV 
DANGERS  TO  THE  EYESIGHT 

If  any  one  should  ask  what  you  considered  the  worst 
thing  that  could  happen  to  you,  you  might  say  blindness. 

Think  what  it  means,  —  to  lose  the  sunlight,  the  sky 
and  the  clouds,  the  birds  and  the  flowers !  Never  to  see 
the  faces  of  friends  again ;  never  to  see  kites  fly,  or  dolls 
shut  their  eyes ;  never  to  be  able  to  read,  or  play  ball  or 
top,  or  skip  rope ! 

Words  could  not  tell  our  loss,  yet  blindness  comes 
suddenly  sometimes. 

To  be  sure,  there  is  the  bony  eye  socket  like  a  mountain 
range  around  the  eyeball  to  protect  it ;  and  it  is  true  that 
it  stands  guard  like  a  faithful  sentinel  by  day  and  by  night ; 
nevertheless,  every  Fourth  of  July  of  every  year  toy  pistols 
and  cannon  firecrackers  blow  their  way  past  the  sentinels 
and  bring  darkness  to  hundreds  of  shining  eyes. 

Scissors,  knives,  and  sticks  in  careless  hands  do  th< 
same  thing.    A  college  student  friend  of  mine  even  fell 
on  a  barbed-wire  fence  in  such  a  way  that  a  sharp  poinl 
pierced  the  eyeball.    Since   then  neither  darkness  nor 
daylight  has  made  any  difference  with  that  eye.    It  is 

stone  blind. 

62 


HE  CANNOT  SEE 
63 


64  GOOD  HEALTH 

On  the  Fourth  of  July  and  every  other  day  let  our 
watchword  be  "  Carefulness."  Toy  pistols  and  cannon 
firecrackers  should  never  be  used.  Remember  that  a 
ruined  eye  will  never  grow  again. 

Bones  are  not  the  only  guardians  of  the  eyeball,  for 
there  are  the  eyelids  besides  —  the  most  wonderful  cur- 
tains in  the  world. 

You  do  not  have  to  pull  a  string,  or  lift  a  latch,  or 
give  a  command  to  make  them  move.  On  the  contrary, 
they  act  as  if  they  did  their  own 
thinking.  If  dust  blows,  the  curtain 
drops  low  and  the  fringe  of  the  eye- 
lash falls  in  such  a  way  that  you  can 
peep  through  it  even  while  it  keeps 

the  dust  out. 
EYELASHES  THAT  KEEP         TC  ..    .  t    •   , 

THE  DUST  OUT  If  any  hght  1S  to°  bright,  the  cur- 

tain slides  down  just  far  enough  to 
let  in  what  you  need ;  if  you  are  sleepy,  it  shuts  down  so 
tight  that  not  a  ray  of  light  can  get  in ;  while  if  anything 
comes  quickly  toward  your  open  eye,  the  curtain  falls 
like  a  flash  to  protect  it. 

Think  of  your  eyelids  for  a  moment.  Guess,  if  you  can, 
how  many  times  they  rise  and  fall  every  minute.  They 
never  grow  weary ;  they  are  always  diligent  and  they  teach 
us  that  even  light  itself  should  be  kept  out  sometimes. 

I  have  never  seen  an  eagle  gaze  at  the  sun  without 
winking,  although  I  have  heard  that  he  can  do  it.  Not  s< 


DANGERS  TO  THE  EYESIGHT  65 

with  us,  however.  Tears  come  to  our  eyes  and  we  grow 
dizzy  when  we  try  the  experiment.  These  signs  prove 
what  harm  a  very  strong  light 
does.  Japanese  mothers  do  not 
know  this,  I  suppose,  for  they 
carry  their  babies  as  if  they 
thought  they  had  the  eyes  of 
an  eagle. 

When  a  Japanese  baby  falls 
asleep  strapped  on  his  mother's 
back,  the  small  head  bobs  over 
backward,  the  face  is  turned 
toward  the  sky,  and  sunshine 
streams  down  on  his  eyes.  Doc- 
tors think  this  is  one  reason  why 
so  many  people  in  Japan  have 
trouble  with  their  eyes. 

Notice  the  first  baby  carriage 
you  meet  on  the  street.  If  the 
sun  is  shining,  the  cover  should 
shade  the  baby's  face,  and  should 

have  a  dark  lining  to  keep  out 

,    ...  .      .,  ,  JAPANESE  BABY  ASLEEP 

as  much  light  as  possible. 

Babies  should  not  gaze  at  a  bright  sky,  at  a  window  that 
is  very  bright,  at  a  lighted  lamp,  or  at  the  fire  in  the  grate. 
Even  we  ourselves  should  not  do  these  things  for  any 
length  of  time.  A  shade  over  our  eyes  when  we  read  in 


66 


GOOD  HEALTH 


the  evening,  or  a  shade  over  the  lamp,  will  keep  the  light 
out  of  our  eyes  and  throw  it  on  our  work  where  we  need  it. 
Yet  there  is  the  opposite  danger  of  too  little  light. 
Thousands  of  women  ruin  their  eyes  by  sewing  in  rooms 
that  are  too  dark,  while  thousands  of  both  men  and 

women  injure   their  sight   by 
reading  in  the  twilight  or  by 
dim  lamps.     It  is  not  safe  to 
do  these  things.    Eyes  are  too 
precious  to  be  strained  either 
by  too  much  or  too  little  light. 
After  all,  however,  the  great- 
est danger  to  children's  eyes  is 
from  microbes.     Indeed, 
some  of  these  microbes 
can  do  as  much  harm 
I     as   a    Fourth   of   July 
explosion. 

Several  years  ago,  in 
a  city  of  Germany, 
there  was  a  great  epi- 
demic of  eye  disease. 
The  first  anybody  knew  about  it  was  that  thirteen 
children  in  one  schoolroom  had  the  trouble.  Then  it 
went  from  room  to  room  and  from  schoolhouse  to 
schoolhouse  until  four  thousand  children  were  suffering 
in  that  one  city  alone. 


SHADING  THE  BABY'S  EYES 


DANGERS  TO  THE  EYESIGHT 


67 


The  same  disease  is  found  in  other  cities  in  different 
parts  of  the  world,  and  it  always  spreads  if  it  gets  a 
chance.  • 

One  of  these  eye  diseases  is  so  terrible,  and  it  spreads 
so  fast,  that  the  government  of  the  United  States  is  very 
strict  in  trying  to  keep  it  out 
of  the  country.  For  this 
reason  there  are  officers  that 
examine  the  eyes  of  every 
immigrant  who  wishes  to 
land.  If  then  any  man, 
woman,  or  child  has  that 
particular  eye  trouble,  the 
officers  either  send  him  back 
at  once  to  the  country  he 
came  from,  or  else  they  see 
that  he  is  cured  before  they 
let  him  go  around  among 
other  people. 

It  is  the  easiest  thing 
in  the  world  for  children, 
through  their  ignorance  of  microbes,  to  help  eye  diseases 
along.  One  child  may  have  sore  eyes  in  the  first  place. 
They  feel  queer;  he  therefore  rubs  them  and  gets 
microbes  on  his  hands.  Next  he  takes  hold  of  the  hands 
of  other  children,  or  of  some  book  or  plaything  that  they 
are  going  to  touch,  and  microbes  are  left  in  those  places. 


THROWING  LIGHT  ON  THE  BOOK 


68  GOOD  HEALTH 

Later  yet,  the  well  children  touch  those  books  and  play- 
things, get  those  same  microbes  on  their  hands,  rub  their 
eyes,  and  leave  the  microbes  there  to  go  to  work  at  once. 
The  only  place  where  these  special  microbes  can  do 
harm  is  in  the  eye. 

In  this  way  disease  microbes  may  be  passed  from  eye 
to  eye  and  from  schoolhouse  to  schoolhouse,  until  there 
is  an  epidemic. 

In  some  schools  the  children  all  wash  in  the  same 
bowl  and  wipe  their  hands  and  faces  on  the  same 
towel.  This  is  most  unfortunate,  for  nothing  helps 
eye  disease  to  spread  faster.  Always  be  careful  not  to 
use  any  water,  or  wash  cloth,  or  towel  that  any  one  else 
has  used. 

Teachers  are  more  particular  about  such  things  than 
they  used  to  be.  They  know  the  danger,  and  when  they 
see  children  with  red  eyes,  or  when  they  notice  that  the 
edges  of  their  eyelids  look  rough  and  sticky  as  if  they 
had  been  fastened  together  by  something,  they  either 
send  the  children  to  a  doctor  at  once,  or  send  them 
home  lest  they  communicate  the  disease  to  the  other 
children. 

"  Pink  eye "  goes  in  just  this  way  from  child  to 
child.  It  also  travels  so  swiftly  that  if  the  first  child  who 
has  it  is  careless  a  whole  room  full  of  boys  and  girls  may 
soon  be  afflicted  by  it.  He  who  has  "  pink  eye  "  should 
therefore  be  as  thoughtful  for  others  as  for  himself. 


DANGERS  TO  THE  EYESIGHT  69 

If  the  doctor  says  that  you  have  any  sort  of  eye 
disease,  you  must  be  as  careful  as  possible  about  two 
things. 

1.  Don't  rub  your  eyes  with  your  hands. 

2.  If  you  have  put  your  hands  to  your 
eyes,  don't  touch  anything  that  other  people 
may  touch  afterwards  until  after  you  have 
washed  your  hands. 

If  others  have  sore  eyes  and  you  want  to  escape,  be 
careful  about  two  things. 

1 .  Never  touch  anything  they  have  touched. 

2.  If  you  have  touched  those  things,  keep 
your  hands  away  from  your  own  eyes  after- 
wards. 


QUESTIONS 


1.  What  pleasures  should  we  lose  if  we  could  not  see? 

2.  What  is  the  use  of  the  eye  socket? 

3.  What  sort  of  accidents  happen  in  spite  of  the  eye  socket? 

4.  What  does  the  eyelid  do? 

5«  How  should  we  protect  the  eyes  of  babies? 

6.  Is  it  possible  for  our  eyes  to  receive  too  much  light? 

7»  How  can  we  save  our  eyes  from  too  much  light? 

8.  How  do  people  ruin  their  eyes  by  too  little  light? 

9.  What  does  the  greatest  harm  to  children's  eyes? 

10.  Describe  the  eye  epidemic  in  Germany. 

11.  How  do  school  children  give  eye  disease  to  each  other? 

12.  If  you  have  the  disease,  what  will  you  do  to  save  others? 

13.  If  others  have  the  disease,  what  will  you  do  to  save  yourself? 


CHAPTER  XV 


READING,  BOOK  PRINT,  AND  GLASSES 

If  a  carpenter  is  hammering  nails  into  the  wall,  or  if  a 
shoemaker  is  sewing  leather  to  make  a  shoe,  it  does 

not  matter  very  much  how 
the  light  falls,  because  his 
work  is  so  big  that  he  can 
see  it  well  enough  in  any 
part  of  the  room;  but  if  a 
man  is  writing  a  lecture,  or 
if  a  boy  is  studying  his  les- 
sons, it  makes  very  much 
difference  where  the  light 
comes  from.  People  who 
use  books  and  pens  every 
day  have  to  be  specially 
careful  about  the  way  the 
light  shines  on  their  work. 
Look  around  your  school- 
room and  see  where  the 
light  is  brightest.  Every 
house  gets  its  light  either  from  daylight  through  the  win- 
dows —  which  is  the  very  best  to  use  —  or  from  lamps, 

70 


BOOK  IN  THE  SHADOW 


READING,  BOOK  PRINT,  AND  GLASSES  71 

gas,  or  electricity ;  but  whichever  kind  of  light  it  is,  the 
way  it  slants  toward  our  book  or  our  work  is  a  matter 
of  great  importance  to  the  eyes  themselves. 

Take  a  book,  stand  with  your  back  toward  the  win- 
dow, and  try  to  read.  Your  shadow  falls  all  over  the 
page  and  makes  it 
almost  as  bad  for  your 
eyes  as  if  you  were  in 
a  dark  room. 

Now  turn  squarely 
around  and  face  the 
window.  This  is  un- 
comfortable, too; 
because  if  you  hold 
the  book  slanting  up- 
ward, as  you  ought 
to  do,  the  page  is 

in  the  shadow  again,  while  the  bright  light  is  in 
your  eyes.  Of  course  this  is  as  wrong  as  possible. 
Try  again. 

Stand  with  your  right  side  toward  the  window.  This 
is  quite  fine,  you  think;  the  light  is  on  the  page  and 
your  eyes  are  in  the  shadow.  Yes,  that  is  very  well  for 
reading;  but  if  you  were  writing,  the  shadow  of  your 
hand  would  fall  across  the  page  and  bother  you  a  little. 
Put  your  hand  up  as  if  you  were  writing  on  the  page, 
and  see  what  I  mean. 


GOOD  HEALTH 


There  is  just  one  other  way.  Stand  with  your  left 
side  to  the  window.  Now  everything  is  perfect  for  read- 
ing and  for  writing  too.  The  light  shines  on  the  white 

page;    it  is  reflected 

up  to  your  eyes  and 

I^iB^^^-JMI  '•• 

m      you  see  the  words 

easily.  You  do  not 
face  the  light,  and  if 
you  are  writing,  the 
shadow  of  the  hand 
falls  where  it  does  not 
cover  anything. 

Whatever  kind   of 
light  is  in  the  room, 
the    rule    about    the 
right    way   to    sit    is 
always    the    same. 
Desks    should    never 
face  the  window,  and 
blackboards  ought  to 
be  opposite  the  win- 
dows and  not  between 
them.    This  not  only 
saves  the  eyes  from  being  dazzled  but  makes  it  easier  to 
read  what  is  written.    Notice  all  these  points  for  yourself. 
You  should  never  strain  your  eyes ;  that  is,  everything 
you  read  in  the  schoolroom  should  be  easy  to  see. 


LIGHT  OVER  THE  RIGHT  SHOULDER 


READING,  BOOK  PRINT,  AND  GLASSES 


73 


Write  a  sentence  on  your  slate.  Write  the  same  sen- 
tence on  paper  with  your  pen.  The  last  one  is  so  much 
easier  to  read  that  we  know  at  once  that  it  is  the  best  for 
the  eyes.  Ink  should  always  be  jet  black,  even  when  it 
is  first  put  on  paper.  Blackboards  and  slates  should  be 
clean  that  the  writing  may 
show  plainly.  Dim  marks 
hurt  the  eyes.  The  easier 
it  is  to  see  a  thing  the  bet- 
ter it  is  for  the  eyesight. 
This  is  just  as  true  of 
books  and  newspapers  as 
of  blackboards  and  writ- 
ing paper. 

Here  is  a  newspaper.  I 
pick  it  up  from  the  table 
and  I  notice  several  inter- 
esting points  about  it. 
Some  of  the  letters  are 
large  and  some  are  small ; 
some  of  the  lines  are  near 

together  and  some  are  far  apart ;  some  of  them  are  short 
and  some  are  long.  On  the  first  page  of  this  special  paper 
there  are  seven  columns  and  most  of  the  letters  are 
no  larger  than  these  in  this  book.  On  the  second  page, 
however,  there  is  but  one  column.  It  is  a  monstrous 
advertisement  with  large  letters  and  lines  far  apart. 


As  THE  LIGHT  SHOULD  FALL 


74  GOOD  HEALTH 

I  learn  from  all  this  that  when  the  letters  are  small 
and  the  lines  near  together  it  is  best  not  to  have  long 
lines.  In  fact,  the  smaller  the  letters  are  the  shorter  the 
lines  ought  to  be.  Notice  the  length  of  the  lines  on  this 
page.  How  many  words  do  you  find  in  each  line  ? 

It  is  easy  to  see  that  if  the  page  you  are  reading  were 
as  wide  as  a  newspaper,  if  the  letters  were  small,  if  the 
lines  were  packed  together  closely,  and  if  they  stretched 
across  the  whole  page  from  one  side  to  the  other,  it 
would  be  hard  for  the  eye  to  jump  back  from  the  end  of 
one  line  to  the  beginning  of  the  next.  With  large  letters, 
therefore,  each  line  may  be  much  longer  than  when  the 
letters  are  small. 

People  who  print  books  usually  think  of  these  things. 
They  use  white  paper  and  black  ink ;  they  do  not  crowd  the 
lines  together ;  they  leave  a  good  margin  around  the  edge 
of  the  page ;  they  do  everything  that  will  help  the  eyes  and 
save  them  from  doing  hard  work  when  they  use  books. 

If  you  wish  to  make  a  little  examination  of  your  own 
eyes  you  may  use  the  newspaper  again  in  a  different 
way.  Pin  it  to  the  side  of  the  room  and  step  as  far  from 
it  as  will  let  you  see  the  large  letters  easily.  Read  with 
both  eyes  first.  Now  read  with  one  eye  at  a  time.  While 
you  are  using  one  eye  leave  the  other  one  wide  open,  but 
cover  it  with  something  black  or  with  your  hand. 

If  you  find  that  you  can  read  better  with  one  eye  than 
you  can  with  the  other,  there  is  some  trouble  and  your 


READING,  BOOK  PRINT,  AND  GLASSES  75 

father  should  take  you  to  the  oculist.  Probably  you  need 
glasses. 

When  you  read  this  page,  if  you  do  not  see  each  line 
and  each  letter  distinctly,  or  if  you  have  a  tired  feeling 
in  the  eyes,  you  should  tell  your  father  or  your  teacher. 

We  call  people  nearsighted  when  they  have  to  hold 
their  books  very  near  to  the  eyes  to  read ;  we  call  them 
farsighted  when  they  have  to  hold  them  too  far  away. 
Neither  kind  of  sight  is  quite  right.  If  you  have  to 
hold  this  book  nearer  to  your  eyes  than  twelve  inches, 
or  farther  off  than  seventeen  inches,  you  may  need 
glasses.  The  oculist  will  tell  you. 

Many  children  need  glasses  for  a  few  years  only  and 
are  able  to  go  without  them  as  they  grow  older ;  whereas 
if  they  do  not  have  them  when  they  need  them,  they 
surfer  later.  For  this  reason,  if  you  have  any  trouble, 
your  father  should  take  you  to  the  oculist  once  or  twice 
a  year. 

QUESTIONS 

1 .  How  are  houses  lighted  ? 

2.  Why  is  it  best  to  have  the  light  fall  over  the  left  shoulder 
on  the  page? 

3.  What  objection  is   there  to  having  it  in  front?  behind?  on 
the  right? 

4.  Why  should  blackboards  be  opposite   the  windows   and   not 
between  them? 

5.  Give  some  of   the  rules  about   paper   and    ink,  blackboards 
and  slates. 


76  GOOD  HEALTH 

6.  Why  should  everything  be  plain  and  easy  to  read? 

7.  Tell  what  you  can  about  newspapers,  long  and  short  lines,  large 
and  small  letters? 

8.  When  ought  the  lines  to  be  short?    When  long? 

9.  How  can  you  find  out  whether  your  eyes  see  alike? 

io.    What  difference  can  you  mention  between  nearsighted  and  far- 
sighted  eyes? 


CHAPTER   XVI 

ANIMALS  AND  ALCOHOL 

Sometimes  men  mix  rum  and  molasses  together  in  a 
shallow  dish  and  set  it  where  flying  insects  may  see  it. 
These  little  creatures  are  so  fond  of  sweet  things  that 
they  smell  the  molasses  for  yards  around  and  hurry  from 
all  sides  to  get  it.  Possibly  they  like  the  rum  too,  for 
they  seem  to  enjoy  the  whole  mixture  and  drink  it  up 
eagerly.  But  imagine  what  happens  afterwards.  Before 
long  the  insects  are  intoxicated.  Then  they  lie  around 
so  helpless  that  men  catch  them  without  even  a  net. 

Did  you  ever  hear  of  beautiful  drunken  butterflies? 
In  South  America  there  is  a  certain  tree  from  the 
flowers  of  which  a  sweet  juice  trickles,  and  hosts  of 
butterflies  use  this  juice  for  food.  Unfortunately,  how- 
ever, while  it  is  still  on  the  tree,  it  sours  and  ferments. 
Now  butterflies  do  not  seem  to  be  quite  bright  enough 
to  know  that  they  take  great  risks  when  they  use  this 
juice  after  it  is  sour.  In  fact,  they  are  so  ignorant  that 
they  run  their  long  tongues  into  the  flowers  and  suck 
it  up  as  merrily  as  ever.  Then  they  feel  queer,  and 
stagger,  and  act  as  some  men  do  on  the  sidewalks  late 
at  night.  They  cannot  fly,  they  act  half-witted,  and 

77 


78  GOOD  HEALTH 

when  their  enemy  comes  they  are  helpless  and  cannot 
get  away. 

The  enemy  is  the  bird.  When  he  sees  these  butterflies 
in  this  sad  plight  he  is  delighted,  and  picks  up  one  after 
the  other,  swallows  them  joyfully,  and  looks  around  for 
more.  If  he  could  talk  about  it,  I  suppose  he  would  say 
that  alcohol  is  one  of  the  best  things  in  the  world  because 
it  helps  him  to  get  a  hearty  meal  every  day. 

No  doubt  many  a  man  who  sells  alcohol  thinks  so 
too.  But  what  about  the  butterflies?  And  what  about 
the  men  ? 

Dr.  Hodge  is  the  professor  of  physiology  in  Clark 
University,  Worcester,  Massachusetts.  He  is  also  a 
student  of  animals.  For  this  reason,  a  few  years  ago,  he 
was  asked  to  find  out  whether  alcohol  does  human  beings 
any  harm  in  certain  directions.  He  was  sure  that  the 
quickest  and  best  way  to  go  to  work  was  to  press  various 
cats  and  dogs  into  this  useful  service,  for  he  knew,  as 
we  do,  that  things  that  are  unwholesome  for  animals 
are  usually  unwholesome  for  people,  and  that  food  which 
nourishes  animals  will  generally  nourish  men  too ;  that 
is,  poison  that  kills  a  dog  will  kill  a  man,  and  food  that 
fattens  a  dog  will  probably  fatten  a  man. 

In  this  way,  then,  animals  sometimes  pass  most  useful 
lives.  By  being  rather  uncomfortable  and  not  very  ener- 
getic for  a  while  they  have  taught  careful,  scientific  men 
lessons  which  will  end  by  saving  thousands  of  human 


ANIMALS  AND  ALCOHOL  79 

beings  from  living  miserable  lives  and  dying  miserable 
deaths. 

In  this  particular  case  Dr.  Hodge  secured  the  help  of 
several  young  kittens.  He  picked  out  two  that  were 
happy  and  healthy,  and  tried  to  make  them  take  milk  that 


ALCOHOL-DISEASED  KITTENS,  JUNE  4,  1895;  CHARACTERISTIC  ATTITUDE 

When  the  photograph  was  taken,  5  P.M.,  all  the  normal  kittens 
were  playing  actively 

had  a  little  alcohol  in  it.    But  the  kittens  would  not  touch 
it ;  they  acted  as  if  they  would  rather  starve  first. 

He  therefore  opened  their  mouths  very  carefully  and 
fed  the  milk  to  them,  a  little  at  a  time.  It  did  not  please 
them,  but  they  swallowed  it.  Dr.  Hodge  did  this  regularly 
for  ten  days,  and  day  by  day  he  noticed  how  it  affected 
the  kittens.  The  result  was  certainly  not  favorable,  for 


8o  GOOD  HEALTH 

although  they  did  not  suffer  the  slightest  pain,  still  they 
were  changed.  They  stopped  playing,  did  not  grow, 
and  did  not  keep  their  fur  clean  and  smooth  as  healthy 
kittens  always  do.  They  did  not  even  care  for  mice, 
or  feel  the  slightest  interest  in  any  dog.  Indeed,  they 
seemed  to  be  dull  and  indifferent  to  everything. 

All  the  other  kittens  acted  as  usual.  They  grew  bigger 
every  day,  played  and  caught  mice,  bristled  up  their  tails 
at  any  dog  that  came  in  sight,  purred,  and  kept  their  fur 
in  good  order. 

The  picture  shows  how  the  alcoholic  kittens  looked 
while  the  others  were  playing.  They  did  not  suffer,  but 
they  were  dull  and  half  asleep,  and  had  no  energy  what- 
ever. Finally,  however,  they  were  actually  ill,  and  by 
this  time  Dr.  Hodge  concluded  that  they  had  taught 
him  at  least  one  great  lesson.  They  had  proved  that 
alcohol  prevents  kittens  from  growing  and  robs  them 
of  their  energy.  Accordingly  he  stopped  giving  the 
stuff  to  them  and  turned  his  attention  to  dogs. 

This  story  is  much  longer,  and  I  must  only  begin  to 
tell  it  to-day. 

On  Washington's  Birthday,  February  22,  1895,  four 
puppies  were  born  in  two  different  kennels.  Two  were 
brothers  and  the  other  two  were  sisters.  They  were  fine, 
strong,  healthy,  young  animals,  and  that  was  one  reason 
why  Dr.  Hodge  specially  needed  their  help  in  his 
important  work. 


ANIMALS  AND  ALCOHOL 


8l 


Two  of  the  dogs  were  a  trifle  more  energetic  than  the 
others,  and  he  picked  these  out  for  his  experiment.  He 
wished  to  see  whether  a  little  alcohol  every  day  would 
make  them  at  all  different  from  the  other  dogs  who  were 
not  to  take  any. 

Each  pair  of  dogs  was  put  into  a  separate  kennel,  and 
each  kennel  was  in  a  large  yard  full  of  sunshine.  These 


BUM  TIPSY  NIG  TOPSY 

Photograph  taken  November  27,  1895 

houses  were  kept  clean  and  neat,  while  the  dogs  had  all 
that  the  heart  of  a  dog  could  wish,  —  plenty  of  good  food, 
dog  biscuit,  fresh  meat,  eggs,  and  milk,  with  bones  enough 
besides,  so  that  they  could  gnaw  to  their  heart's  content. 
Of  course  they  also  had  fresh  drinking  water  two  or 
three  times  a  day. 


82  GOOD  HEALTH 

The  four  dogs  were  treated  exactly  alike,  except  in 
one  important  respect.  Every  day  Dr.  Hodge  mixed  a 
little  alcohol  into  the  food  that  went  to  one  of  the  ken- 
nels. The  dogs  liked  their  food  better  without  it,  but 
they  had  good  appetites  and  ate  whatever  was  given 
them.  On  the  other  hand,  not  a  drop  of  alcohol  went  to 
the  second  kennel.  This  did  not  seem  to  make  much 
difference  at  first,  for  all  four  dogs  grew  equally  fast, 
and  all  looked  equally  strong  and  healthy. 

The  dogs  had  to  be  named,  and  Dr.  Hodge  called  one 
pair  Bum  and  Tipsy,  because  they  took  alcohol;  the 
other  pair,  in  the  other  kennel,  he  named  Nig  and  Topsy. 
The  first  Topsy  died  soon  after  the  experiment  began, 
and  Topsy  number  two  took  her  place. 

The  next  chapter  will  tell  a  little  about  the  history  of 
these  dogs.  All  four  were  cocker  spaniels. 

QUESTIONS 

1.  What  happens  to  certain  butterflies  in  South  America? 

2.  What  do  the  birds  do  to  the  butterflies? 

3.  What  was  Dr.  Hodge  asked  to  find  out? 

4.  Why  did  he  decide  to  get  the  help  of  cats  and  dogs? 

5.  What  did  he  give  to  the  kittens  with  their  milk? 

6.  How  did  the  alcohol  affect  them? 

7.  When  were  the  four  puppies  born? 

8.  How  many  puppies  were  put  into  each  kennel? 

9.  What  were  the  names  of  the  puppies? 

10.  What  food  did  they  have? 

1 1 .  Which  two  dogs  received  a  little  alcohol  with  their  food  ? 


CHAPTER  XVII 

ANIMALS  AND   ALCOHOL  (continued} 

When  the  four  dogs  were  two  years  old  an  epidemic 
of  dog  sickness  broke  out  in  Worcester,  and  it  was  then 
that  Dr.  Hodge  hoped  to  discover  whether  or  not  alco- 
hol was  doing  any  special  harm  to  Bum  and  Tipsy. 
Indeed  it  was  just  at  this  point  that  they  were  able 
to  be  especially  useful,  for  when  the  epidemic  of  dog 
sickness  appeared  they  were  among  the  first  to  take  it. 
More  than  that,  they  were  so  very  ill  for  two  weeks  that 
Dr.  Hodge  says  he  "  hardly  expected  either  of  them  to 
live  from  day  to  day." 

For  a  week  they  would  not  eat  anything  and  he  "  had 
to  drench  them  with  hot  milk  and  eggs  at  frequent 
intervals  "  to  keep  them  from  starving. 

Of  course,  without  a  moment's  hesitation,  Dr.  Hodge 
:opped  giving  them  alcohol  while  they  were  ill,  and  at 
same   time  everything   in   the  world  was  done  to 
take  them  comfortable  and  to  cure  them  as  speedily 
possible. 

In  spite  of  every  care,  however,  they  did  certainly  have 
hard  time.  For  several  days  both  dogs  were  blind,  and 
iey  grew  exceedingly  thin.  Nevertheless  they  were  so 

83 


84 


GOOD  HEALTH 


well  cared  for  that  little  by  little  they  recovered.    From 
that  time  on,  however,  Tipsy  was  blind  in  one  eye. 

Dr.  Hodge  says  that  both  Bum  and  Tipsy  were  just 
as  ill  as  they  could  possibly  be  and  live.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  dogs  that  took  no  alcohol  hardly  seemed  to 
have  the  disease  at  all.  They  did  not  feel  as  comfortable 


BUM 


TIPSY  NIG  TOPSY 

Photograph  taken  October,  1896 


as  usual  for  several  days,  but  they  did  not  lose  their 
appetite,  they  did  not  suffer,  and  they  did  not  grow 
thin;  in  fact,  they  were  hardly  disturbed  enough  to 
be  called  ill. 

Naturally  Dr.  Hodge  decided  that  dogs  that  have  alco- 
hol in  their  food  get  sick  more  easily,  stay  sick  longer, 
and  suffer  more  than  dogs  that  do  not  have  it. 


ANIMALS  AND  ALCOHOL  85 

This  then  was  the  first  great  lesson  which  Bum  and 
Tipsy  taught  the  scientists.  But  this  was  not  enough; 
there  were  other  lessons  to  be  learned.  For  this  purpose 
Dr.  Hodge  now  made  some  delicate  little  machines  and 
strapped  one  of  them  to  the  collar  of  each  dog.  By  this 
machine  he  could  tell  from  day  to  day  just  how  much 
exercise  each  dog  took.  He  wished  to  find  out  which  of 
them  did  the  most  running  and  jumping  and  playing, 
because  this  would  show  which  dogs  felt  the  most 
vigorous. 

Some  people  think  that  alcohol  makes  men  spry,  but 
it  turned  out  the  other  way  with  the  dogs.  These 
machines  showed  that  although  Bum  and  Tipsy  had  now 
recovered  from  their  illness,  and  although  they  were 
cheerful  and  had  good  appetites,  still  they  were  not  so 
active  as  Nig  and  Topsy  ;  in  fact,  the  machines  proved 
that  they  did  only  about  half  as  much  running  around 
as  the  other  two  dogs. 

Dr.  Hodge  then  made  another  test  in  the  same  direc- 
tion. While  Bum  and  Tipsy  still  continued  to  have  a 
little  alcohol  in  their  food  every  day,  he  took  all  four 
dogs  to  the  gymnasium  of  Clark  University  in  Worces- 
ter and  trained  them  to  run  after  a  rubber  ball  and  bring 
it  back  to  the  starting  point. 

The  room  was  three  hundred  feet  long,  and  he  threw 
the  ball  one  hundred  times  for  each  game  of  practice. 
He  threw  it  fast,  made  the  dogs  work  hard,  and  kept 


86 


GOOD  HEALTH 


TOPSY 
Photograph  taken  in  November,  1895 


careful  count,  for  the  sake  of  finding   out  which  dog 
brought  the  ball  back  oftenest.    The  result  was  the  same 

story  over  again.  No 
matter  how  hard  Bum 
and  Tipsy  worked,  Nig 
and  Topsy  beat  them 
every  time,  for  they 
brought  the  ball  back 
twice  as  often.  Yet 
even  though  they  did 
not  do  so  much,  when 
the  game  was  over  Bum 
and  Tipsy  were  always  more  tired  than  Nig  and  Topsy. 
This  showed  that  dogs  that  take  alcohol  every  day  are  not 
so  strong  as  other  dogs. 
Through  all  these 
days,  and  in  these  dif- 
ferent experiments, 
Bum  and  Tipsy  were 
not  suffering  in  any 
way.  Indeed,  they  felt 
quite  well  and  happy; 
but  they  made  it  very 
plain  that  when  dogs 
take  alcohol  regularly 
they  are  not  so  vigorous  as  dogs  that  go  without  it.  Com- 
pare the  second  picture  with  the  one  at  the  end  of  the 


TIPSY 
Photograph  taken  in  November,  1895 


ANIMALS  AND  ALCOHOL 


NIG 

Photograph  taken  in  November,  1895 


last  lesson,  and  see  whether  you  think  Bum  and  Tipsy 
look  brighter  or  more  dull  than  when  that  was  taken. 

While  Dr.  Hodge 
was  studying  this  sub- 
ject he  noticed  another 
great  difference:  Nig 
and  Topsy  always  be- 
haved like  any  other 
well-fed,  healthy,  jolly 
creatures.  When  any 
stranger  spoke  to  them 
they  were  friendly, 
and  wagged  their  tails  cheerfully.  When  anything  hap- 
pened that  they  did  not  understand  they  were  curious 
about  it  and  bravely  went  to  investigate.  When  whistles 

sounded  and  bells  rang 
furiously  they  barked 
furiously  too,  but  they 
did  not  act  afraid.  Just 
here,  then,  was  the  dif- 
ference.  Bum  and 
Tipsy  were  timid  and 
frightened  over  every- 
thing and  over  nothing. 

Photograph  taken  in  November,  1895  TTT1 

When  strangers  came 

they  went  off  to  some  corner  of  their  kennel  and  crouched 
there.    When  whistles  blew  and  bells  rang  they  yelped  as 


88  GOOD  HEALTH 

only  frightened  dogs  can,  and  sometimes  they  seemed  to 
be  terribly  frightened  when  nothing  at  all  was  in  sight. 
Perhaps  they  were  having  a  sort  of  dog  delirium  tremens, 
but  nobody  knows  about  that.  All  we  do  know  is  that 
Bum  and  Tipsy  always  seemed  timid  and  afraid  where 
Nig  and  Topsy  were  brave  and  full  of  fun. 

These  separate  pictures  of  Bum  and  Nig  and  Tipsy 
and  Topsy  show  the  difference  between  the  dogs  very 
well. 

After  Bum  and  Tipsy  had  been  taking  alcohol  for 
about  three  years  Dr.  Hodge  decided  to  see  whether 
they  could  recover  and  be  vigorous  again  like  other  dogs. 
He  therefore  stopped  the  alcohol.  Tipsy  died  soon 
afterwards,  but  Bum  lived  on.  He  grew  stronger  every 
day  until  he  was  almost  as  strong  as  Nig,  his  brother. 
He  played  as  much  and  could  bring  the  rubber  ball  back 
almost  as  fast  and  often.  Even  yet,  however,  he  was 
rather  timid.  He  was  not  taking  alcohol  now,  and  every- 
thing was  being  done  to  increase  his  health  and  vigor. 
Yet  during  the  winter  of  1900  a  sad  thing  happened: 
he  began  to  have  trouble  with  both  eyes.  They  grew 
worse  and  worse,  and  by  spring,  Bum  was  totally  blind. 

Later  came  another  calamity.  He  had  a  painful  and 
terrible  skin  disease,  which  lasted  a  long  time,  and  after 
that  he  looked  like  a  poor  old,  blind,  feeble  dog,  but  Nig 
was  strong  and  healthy  and  happy.  He  did  n't  seem  old 
at  all,  though  he  was  Bum's  twin  brother. 


ANIMALS  AND  ALCOHOL  89 

What  difference  do  you  suppose  Dr.  Hodge  discov- 
ered in  the  puppies  of  the  four  dogs?  During  those 
four  years  Bum  and  Tipsy  had  twenty-three  puppy 
children,  but  so  many  of  them  were  deformed,  and  so 
many  were  dead  when  they  were  born,  that  only  four 
lived  to  grow  up.  During  the  same  years  Nig  and  Topsy 
had  forty-five  puppies.  Four  of  them  were  deformed  a 
very  little,  none  were  dead  when  they  were  born,  and 
forty-one  lived. 

So  this  is  the  end  of  the  story  of  Bum  and  Tipsy. 

Let  us  cherish  their  memory,  for  the  lessons  they 
:aught  may  save  thousands  of  human  lives. 

QUESTIONS 

1.  What  happened  when  the  dogs  were  two  years  old  ? 

2.  Give  the  history  of  Bum  and  Tipsy  while  they  were  ill. 

3.  What  change  did  Dr.  Hodge  make  in  their  food  ? 

4.  How  did  the  same  disease  affect  Nig  and  Topsy  ? 

5.  What  did  Dr.  Hodge  decide  about  dogs  that  have  alcohol  in 
icir  food? 

6.  What  did  Dr.  Hodge  do  to  find  out  which  dogs  took  the  most 
exercise  every  day  ? 

7.  What  gymnasium  did  the  dogs  have  to  practice  in  ? 

8.  Which  dogs  were  always  the  most  active  ? 

9.  Which  dogs  were  bravest  when  whistles  sounded  and  bells  rang  ? 

10.  Which  dogs  were  most  cordial  to  strangers  ? 

1 1 .  How  long  did  the  dogs  take  alcohol  ? 

12.  After  Tipsy  died  what  was  the  history  of  Bum  ? 

13.  How  did  Nig  seem  at  the  same  time  ? 


CHAPTER   XVIII 


THE  EAR  THAT  WE  CAN  SEE 

There  are  men  and  women  on  islands  in  the  Pacific 
Ocean  who  look  as  if  they  thought  their  ears  were  made 

on  purpose  to  hold  flowers 
or  tobacco  pipes.  They 
prick  a  hole  through  the 
flesh  of  the  ear,  stretch  it 
and  pull  it,  and  put  one 
small  rolled-up  leaf  after 
another  into  it  until  the 
hole  is  large  enough  to 
hold  their  pipe  or  their 
flowers.  Sometimes,  in- 
deed, it  is  so  large  that  a 
man  may  slip  his  hand 
and  arm  through  it  to  his 
elbow. 

These  people  feel  very 

fine  when  they  look  like 
A  STYLISH  MICRONESIAN  ,1  •  •    , 

the   man   in   the   picture. 
He  is  in  the  height  of  fashion,  and  other  people  envy  him. 

Many  women  in  America  used  to  be  almost  as  foolish. 

90 


THE  EAR  THAT  WE  CAN  SEE 


91 


But  earrings  are  not  the  fashion  now,  so  these  women 
go  without  them. 

Look  around .  at  the  ears  in  the  room  where  you  are 
and  see  what  each  one  is  like.  Just  a  piece  of  flesh  and 
gristle  with  ridges  in  it,  and  a  hole  in  the  middle,  —  that 
is  all  you  will  see.  It  is  not  always  beautiful,  but  it  is 
useful,  and  if  you  did  not  have  any 
ears  on  the  sides  of  your  head  you 
would  look  queer  enough. 

Yet  ears  have  different  shapes. 
Some  are  large  and  some  are 
small;  some  are  long  and  some  are 
short ;  some  grow  close  to  the  head 
and  some  stand  off  like  little  sails.  If 
you  want  your  ears  to  be  flat  against 
your  head,  be  careful  not  to  sleep 
with  them  doubled  over;  be  careful  To  CATCH  THE  WAVES 
also  not  to  press  them  out  of  place 
either  with  your  bonnet  strings  or  by  crowding  them 
down  with  your  cap.  For  the  sake  of  our  friends  who 
have  to  see  us,  it  is  well  to  do  what  we  can  to  have 
bodies  that  are  pleasant  to  look  at. 

To  tell  the  truth,  a  well-shaped  ear  improves  the  looks 
of  any  one.  It  also  helps  to  catch  sounds  from  every 
direction  and  send  them  into  the  hole  in  the  middle  of 
the  side  of  the  head.  This  hole  is  indeed  far  more 
important  than  the  rim  itself. 


GOOD  HEALTH 


Poke  your  finger  in  and  see  how  small  it  is ;  cover  both 
ears  at  once  with  your  hands  and  notice  how  little  you 
can  hear.  If  you  should  stop  it  up  entirely  you  would 
hardly  hear  anything  at  all,  for  it  is  the  outside  end 


THROWING  LIGHT  ON  THE  EARDRUM 

of  the  tube  that  carries  sound  from  the  world  for  us 
to  hear. 

It  is  about  one  inch  long,  and  the  deeper  it  goes  the 
narrower  it  gets.  Wax  and  a  few  hairs  do  what  they 
can  to  keep  the  insects  out ;  yet  it  is  this  very  wax  that 
troubles  us  sometimes.  The  best  way  to  get  rid  of  it  is 
to  use  a  soft,  damp  cloth  over  the  end  of  the  finger. 


THE  EAR  THAT  WE  CAN  SEE 


93 


Never  use  anything  sharper  or  harder  than  that,  for  the 
drum  itself  is  at  the  opposite  end  of  the  hole,  —  the 
smallest  drum  and  the  busiest  drum  in  the  world. 

The  hole  is  so  small  and  the  tube  is  so  narrow  that 
you  see  no  sign  of  this  drum,  even  if  you  put  your  eye 
close  to  the  opening  and  look  in  as  far  as  you  can. 
Doctors  know  another  way,  however.  First  goes  in  a 
silver  tube ;  then  a  reflector,  as  the  picture  shows.  This 

nds  light  to  the  bottom  of  the  tube  and  shows  the 
it  of  skin  that  we  call  the  eardrum.  It  is  stretched 

ross  the  round  bottom  of  the  tube  and  fastened  tight 
n  every  side. 

A  man  may  use  the  brightest  light  he  can  get ;  he  may 
send  it  down  as  far  as  it  will  go ;  yet  he  will  see  nothing 
beyond  the  eardrum,  for  it  hides  everything  on  the  other 
side.  It  never  opens  unless  something  enters  and  breaks 
it,  or  unless  some  disease  injures  it.  Thousands  of  people 
do  not  know  how  easy  it  is  to  break  the  eardrum. 

Yesterday  I  saw  a  full-grown  man  put  a  pointed  pencil 
into  his  ear  and  turn  it  slowly  round  and  round.  He 
acted  as  if  he  were  giving  himself  a  good  scratching. 
Some  day  his  hand  may  not  be  steady,  or  a  neighbor 
may  hit  his  elbow;  the  hard  point  may  then  break  its 
way  through  his  eardrum  and  damage  it  forever. 

Strangely  enough,  boxing  the  ears  may  do  the  same 
thing.  You  know  how  it  is  when  you  hit  a  paper  bag 
full  of  air:  the  paper  is  sure  to  split  from  end  to  end 


94  GOOD  HEALTH 

with  a  bang.  Quite  in  that  way  it  happens  sometimes 
with  an  eardrum.  An  angry  man  brings  his  hand  down 
hard  on  a  boy's  ear;  more  air  crowds  in  than  the  ear 
can  hold,  and  the  drum  splits  like  a  paper  bag.  Shout- 
ing in  the  ear  may  do  it,  too ;  even  a  kiss  on  the  hole  of 
the  ear  may  break  the  drum. 

Avoid  all  these  things.  Think  how  careful  men  are 
to  keep  dust  out  of  their  watches.  Remember  that  ear 
machinery  is  more  precious  than  any  watch  machinery 
that  was  ever  made,  and  that  dust  may  damage  it  through 
a  hole  in  the  eardrum. 

QUESTIONS 

1.  How  do  some  people  treat  the  fleshy  part  of  the  ear? 

2.  What  is  the  outside  ear  for? 

3.  Why  is  the  hole  important? 

4.  How  long  is  it? 

5.  What  is  the  wax  for? 

6.  How  should  we  remove  it? 

7»    Why  should  we  never  put  anything  hard  or  sharp  in  the  ear? 

8.  Why  is  it  dangerous  to  box  a  boy's  ear? 

9.  What  other  things  should  be  avoided  ? 

IO.    If  the  drum  is  broken,  what  happens  to  the  ear  machinery? 


CHAPTER   XIX 
THE  EAR  WE  CANNOT  SEE 

Several  years  ago  a  man  examined  the  ears  of  hundreds 
of  children  in  Europe  and  found  that  about  one  quarter 
of  them  were  a  little  deaf. 

These  children  did  not  know  it  themselves;  they 
thought  they  could  hear  as  well  as  anybody.  The  teachers 
thought  so  too,  only  they  were  quite  sure  that  those 
special  children  were  the  dull  ones  in  the  school.  No 
doubt  they  were  rather  surprised  when  the  man  who 
examined  them  found  that  generally  the  dull  ones  were 
also  the  deaf  ones. 

The  same  man  next  went  to  a  school  in  Scotland 
There  he  asked  the  teachers  to  pick  out  seventy  bright 
children  and  seventy  dull  children  for  him  to  examine. 
Strange  to  say,  he  found  about  twice  as  many  deaf 
children  among  the  seventy  who  were  dull  as  among  the 
seventy  who  were  bright.  Naturally  enough,  with  such 
proof  as  that,  he  began  to  be  pretty  positive  that  dull- 
ness and  deafness  often  go  together. 

From  there  he  went  to  a  school  in  England,  where  he 
became  even  more  positive  than  ever ;  for  here  he  found 
that  most  of  the  bright  children  could  hear  his  watch 

95 


96  GOOD  HEALTH 

tick  when  it  was  as  far  from  their  ears  as  fifty-one  inches, 
while  most  of  the  dull  children  could  not  hear  it  unless 
it  was  as  near  to  them  as  thirty-one  inches. 

All  these  experiments  showed  that  when  children  are 
a  little  deaf  they  seem  dull  in  the  schoolroom,  and  that 
when  they  are  not  deaf  they 
are  more  apt  to  seem  bright. 
Nevertheless   we   know   that 
very  often  deaf  children  are 
not   really   dull,   for    doctors 
have  cured   them,   and   after 


TESTING  HIS  HEARING 

the  cure  they  have  been  as  bright  as  anybody.  Of 
course  the  chance  is  that  the  better  we  hear  the  quicker 
we  shall  understand.  It  is  important,  therefore,  to  have 
good  hearing. 

If  you  wish  to  decide  about  your  own  hearing  you 
might  try  this  experiment. 

Get  several  children  together ;  ask  some  one  to  hold  a 
watch  for  you  to  listen  to,  and  see  who  can  hear  it  tick  the 


THE  EAR  WE  CANNOT  SEE 


97 


farthest  off.  Also  test  each  of  your  ears  separately.  Cover 
one  ear  while  you  listen  with  the  other,  and  decide  which 
hears  the  better.  You  may  find  a  difference  between  them. 


A    CUT    THROUGH    THE    RIGHT    EAR 

«,  the  tube  ;  b,  the  ear  drum ;  c,  the  ear  bones  ;  d,  the  snail  shell ; 
^,  the  nerve  of  hearing 

If  the  other  children  can  hear  the  watch  farther  away 
than  you  can  hear  it,  or  if  one  of  your  ears  hears  better 
than  the  other,  you  should  tell  your  father  and  he  should 
take  you  to  a  doctor  to  be  examined.  Very  likely  the 
doctor  will  find  out  what  the  trouble  is  and  cure  you. 


98  GOOD   HEALTH 

The  only  means  we  have  of  knowing  anything  about 
the  machinery  that  does  all  this  hearing  is  what  people 
tell  us  who  have  seen  what  there  is  on  the  other  side  of 
the  eardrum. 

First  they  find  three  tiny  bones  that  stretch  from  the 
underside  of  the  drum  to  the  next  part  of  the  hearing 
machine,  which  is  called  the  inside  ear.  Here  there  are 
slender  tubes  full  of  liquid,  within  bone  channels  full  of 
liquid,  and  a  special  tube  in  a  bony  case  that  looks  like 
a  snail  shell. 

This  inside  ear  is  the  most  important  part  of  the  hear- 
ing machine,  because  the  nerves  which  report  the  sound 
to  the  brain  are  here.  It  is  so  small  that  you  could  put 
it  into  a  box  one  inch  square,  but  it  is  more  precious 
than  any  box  of  gold,  and  the  bony  case  that  holds  it  is 
stronger  than  any  watch  case.  Every  sound  that  we 
hear — whether  it  be  a  clap  of  thunder  or  the  whisper  of 
our  dearest  friend  —  goes  through  the  eardrum,  the  tiny 
bones,  the  liquid,  and  the  nerves,  to  the  brain ;  and  that 
is  what  we  call  hearing. 

Our  ears  may,  however,  get  out  of  order.  I  know  a 
boy  who  is  deaf  whenever  he  catches  cold,  and  with  each 
cold  he  is  a  little  deafer  than  he  was  the  time  before. 
The  worst  of  it  is  that  the  cold  sometimes  gives  him  an 
abscess  in  his  ear.  He  had  that  sort  of  cold  last  winter, 
and  I  never  saw  any  boy  suffer  such  terrible  pain.  At 
last,  however,  the  pain  went  away  and  he  felt  quite  well 


THE  EAR  WE  CANNOT  SEE  99 

again ;  yet  he  was  deaf  for  weeks  afterwards.  He  could 
not  hear  his  own  watch  tick,  while  any  one  who  talked 
to  him  had  to  shout.  I  told  him  he  must  make  up  his 
mind  never  to  take  another  cold,  for  at  this  rate  he  would 
be  perfectly  deaf  after  a  while. 

Even  people  who  hear  very  well  do  not  always  hear 
the  same  things  in  the  same  way.  If  you  should  go  into 
the  woods  when  the  birds  are  singing,  you  would  prob- 
ably hear  a  great  confusion  of  sounds  and  songs ;  perhaps 
you  would  not  know  one  song  from  another;  whereas, 
in  the  same  woods,  a  man  who  had  trained  his  hearing 
for  bird  songs  might  say,  "  I  hear  the  voices  of  a  dozen 
different  birds  that  I  know."  And  then  he  would  give 
you  their  names,  —  robin,  bluebird,  flicker,  goldfinch,  and 
all  the  others. 

One  of  the  most  astonishing  things  about  our  hearing 
is  that  we  can  make  it  careful  or  careless  by  the  way  we 
use  our  ears.  Listen  carefully  to  a  new  song  or  a  new 
piece  of  music  and  you  will  learn  it  faster.  Separate  the 
noises  on  the  city  street  every  day,  and  you  will  learn  to 
know  each  sound  by  itself.  The  more  carefully  we  listen, 
the  better  we  remember;  and  the  better  we  remember, 
the  more  we  enjoy  what  we  hear. 

Thus  one  thing  helps  another:  teach  yourself  to 
listen  to  sounds  and  you  will  surprise  yourself  and  your 
friends  by  the  way  you  remember  them. 


100  GOOD  HEALTH 

QUESTIONS 

1.  What  did   the  man  discover  about   the  hearing  of   children 
in  Europe? 

2.  Tell  about  the  children  in  the  school  in  Scotland. 

3.  What  test  did  he  make  in  the  English  school? 

4.  From  all  these  examinations  what  did  he  decide? 

5.  How  do  we  know  that  a  deaf  child  may  not  be  dull? 

6.  How  may  you  decide  whether  you  can  hear  as  well  as  other 
children? 

7.  What  is  the  most  important  hearing-part  of  the  ear? 

8.  What  sometimes  makes  children  deaf? 

9.  How  can  we  train  our  hearing? 


CHAPTER  XX 
THE  WAY  TO  TREAT  THE  FINGER  NAILS 

There  are  men  in  India  who  make  a  vow  to  keep  their 
hands  shut  tight  for  ten  or  even  twenty  years.  Very 
often  they  keep  the  vow,  and  of  course  the  nails  are 
growing  all  the  time. 

At  first  they  grow  into  the  flesh  of  the  palm  of  the  hand ; 
then  they  go  through  it.  Little  by  little  they  crowd  be- 
tween the  bones  until  they  make  their  way  through  them 
too  and  come  out  on  the  back  of  the  hand.  When  that  has 
come  to  pass,  men  cannot  open  their  hands  even  if  they 
wish  to ;  in  a  strange  way  they  are  really  nailed  shut. 

You  and  I  cannot  imagine  how  such  a  man  must  suffer, 
yet  people  who  wear  tight  shoes  may  know  a  little  about 
it.  Sometimes  such  shoes  press  the  nails  so  hard  that 
they  become  "  ingrowing  nails,"  and  these  are  very  pain- 
ful indeed. 

After  certain  kinds  of  illness  the  nails  drop  off  and 
new  ones  grow  in  their  place ;  after  other  diseases  the 
nail  is  rough  and  thick;  and  always,  the  older  a  man  is, 
the  more  brittle  his  nails  get. 

No  carpenter,  mason,  farmer,  or  writer  could  do  good 
work  if  he  had  a  finger  nail  like  a  brittle  claw  on  the  end 


101 


IO2 


GOOD  HEALTH 


of  each  finger.  This,  then,  explains  certain  people  in 
China.  They  are  ashamed  to  work  and  they  wish  their 
neighbors  to  know  that  their  hands  are  as  idle  as 
they  are  fine,  so  they  let  one  or  two  finger  nails  grow 
very  long.  These  slender  claws  break  so  easily  that  the 
owner  must  protect  each  one  with  a  special  covering. 

The  nail  protector 
shown  in  the  pic- 
ture is  three  and  a 
half  inches  long. 
It  is  made  of  silver 
and  is  truly  beauti- 
ful. 

Nevertheless, 
whether  wre  are  old 
or  young,  whether 
we  work  or  play, 
it  is  we  ourselves 
who  decide  about 
our  finger  nails.  We  can  keep  them  rough  or  smooth, 
straight  or  crooked,  tidy  or  untidy,  just  as  we  choose. 
Everybody  knows  this.  For  this  reason,  when  we  see 
the  finger  nails  of  any  man,  woman,  or  child,  we  think 
we  know  something  about  that  person. 

These  two  pictures  show  us  two  kinds  of  finger  nails. 
One  is  oval  at  the  bottom  and  oval  at  the  top ;  it  shows 
the  pretty  white  crescent;  it  is  clean  and  it  is  trimmed 


As  THE  CHINESE  PROTECT  A  FINGER 
NAIL 


THE  WAY  TO  TREAT  THE  FINGER  NAILS 


103 


A  FINGER  NAIL 
THAT  is  A  CREDIT 


smooth.    From  the  looks  of  one  such  nail  we  are  sure 

that  the  rest  of  the  hand  is  just  as  clean,  and  it  is  easy 

for  us  to  believe  all  sorts  of   pleasant 

things  about   the  person  that  owns  it. 
When  finger  nails  look  like  the  one 

in  the  second  picture,  however,  we  are 

quite    apt    to    have    opposite    thoughts 

about  the  owner. 

Here  the  skin  grows  so  high  on  the 

nail  that  the  little  crescent  does  not  show 

at  all.    This  makes  the  whole  nail  look 

square  and  short.    See  how  it  is  trimmed, 

—  uneven,  and   short   in  spots;   it  also 

looks  as  if  somebody  had   taken  pains  to   pack  damp 

dust  under  the  crooked  edge.  Such  a  neglected  nail ! 
I  think  I  must  tell  you  that  the  child  who  owns  that 
finger  was  ashamed  to  have  the  photo- 
graph taken.  That  is  not  strange,  for 
when  we  look  at  it  we  are  quite  sure 
about  the  rest  of  the  hand ;  we  are  also 
more  than  half  afraid  that  the  teeth,  the 
body,  and  the  clothes  all  match  it. 
Finger  nails  are  great  telltales. 

There    are    two   very    good    reasons 

why  we  should    take   the   best   possible  care  of  them. 

1.  For  the  sake  of  health. 

2.  For  the  sake  of  beauty. 


A  FINGER  NAIL 

THAT  TELLS  TALES 


104  GOOD  HEALTH 

Many  people  do  not  seem  to  know  that,  as  far  as  their 
health  goes,  it  is  worse  to  have  dust  under  the  finger  nails 
than  to  have  it  on  the  end  of  the  nose  or  in  the  middle 
of  the  cheek ;  for  some  of  the  worst  microbes  may  be 
packed  away  in  the  dust  under  the  nails,  and  such  mi- 
crobes may  enter  any  scratch  or  cut  we  have ;  they  may 
also  go  into  our  mouths  with  the  food  we  touch  with 
our  fingers.  In  fact  this  is  the  most  important  reason  for 
keeping  the  nails  clean,  though  the  second  reason  is  the 
one  that  people  think  most  about.  They  want  their 
fingers  to  match  their  clean  faces  and  their  clean  clothes. 
They  are  ashamed  not  to  have  one  part  of  the  body  look 
as  clean  as  another  part.  For  the  sake  of  beauty,  there- 
fore, they  keep  their  nails  well  cleaned  and  trimmed. 
This  is  a  good  reason  too. 

I  have  heard  of  children,  and  grown  people  too,  who 
trim  their  nails  with  their  teeth,  biting  them  around  the 
edges.  Sometimes  the  habit  becomes  so  strong  that  they 
keep  on  even  when  there  is  no  nail  to  bite.  I  have  a 
friend  who  bites  until  she  gives  herself  pain  and  the 
blood  comes.  Naturally,  of  course,  her  finger  nails  are 
so  short  that  the  flesh  rolls  over  the  top  of  each  nail ; 
and  the  fingers  are  such  queer-looking  things  that  she 
often  doubles  them  up  into  her  hand  to  keep  them  out 
of  sight.  She  says  she  cannot  stop  the  biting  because 
she  has  the  habit,  and  she  bites  before  she  has  time 
to  think. 


THE  WAY  TO  TREAT  THE  FINGER  NAILS          105 

There  are  three  reasons  why  it  is  a  mistake  to  trim 
finger  nails  with  the  teeth. 

1.  The  pieces  we  bite  off  are  sharp  and 
hard  and  bad  for  the  stomach.    Yet  if  they 
are  in  our  mouths  we  may  swallow  them. 

2.  No  teeth  can  trim  nails  as  well  as  a  file 
can  do  it. 

3.  If  we  get  the  habit  of  using  the  teeth, 
we  shall  be  likely  to  keep  the  nails  too  short. 
The  flesh  then  rolls  over  the  ends,  and  in- 
stead of  having  slender,  useful,  pretty  ends 
to  our  fingers,  we  shall  have  round,  blunt 
finger  tips  that  cannot  untie  knots  or  pick 
up  any  small  thing.    We  shall  be  ashamed  of 
our  fingers  and  our  friends  will  be  ashamed 
of  us. 

There  are  men  and  women  in  every  city  who  spend 
all  their  time  in  taking  care  of  finger  nails  for  other 
people,  but  any  intelligent  person  can  keep  his  own 
nails  in  good  shape  with  simple  things.  What  we  need 
most  is  warm  water,  soap,  a  nailbrush,  a  nail  file,  and  a 
nail  cleaner. 

You  can  buy  a  stiff  little  brush  with  a  wooden  back  at 
any  grocery  store  for  three  or  five  cents.  It  will  not  be 
handsome,  but  the  bristles  will  get  under  the  nails  as  well 
as  if  it  had  an  ivory  back.  For  five  or  ten  cents  more 
you  can  buy  a  nail  file  and  cleaner  at  any  hardware  shop. 


106  GOOD  HEALTH 

Use  the  water,  the  soap,  arid  the  brush  until  your  nails 
really  look  clean,  or  until  the  dust  is  so  soft  under  them 
that  the  nail  cleaner  will  take  it  out  without  any  trouble. 
Never  clean  the  nails  with  a  knife  or  scissors,  or  any 
sharp  thing  that  takes  out  the  dust  by  scraping  the  nail. 
You  will  make  it  rough,  and  it  will  be  harder  to  get 

the  dust  out  next  time. 
Never  scrape  the  top 
of  the  nail  either ;  you 
will  simply  make  it 
grow  thick  and  clumsy. 
When  the  nail  is 
clean,  file  the  edge  un- 
til it  has  just  the  curve 
you  wish.  Some  people 
use  curved  scissors,  but 
a  file  is  best  because  it 

NAIL-CLEANING  TOOLS 

leaves   the    smoothest 

edge.  Pointed  nails  break  so  easily  that  the  best  style 
is  to  make  the  shape  of  the  finger  nails  match  the  oval 
shape  of  the  end  of  the  finger. 

The  picture  shows  how  to  use  the  thumb  nail  of  one 
hand  to  press  back  the  flesh  from  each  nail  of  the  other 
hand.  Make  as  much  of  the  crescent  show  as  you  can 
without  giving  pain  to  the  flesh,  and  do  it  when  the 
fingers  are  damp.  If  the  skin  is  pressed  back  little  by 
little  every  day,  the  shape  of  the  nails  will  improve. 


THE  WAY  TO  TREAT  THE  FINGER  NAILS          107 

When  the  skin  is  once  in  the  habit  of  staying  back, 
and  when  you  once  give  the  nail  the  right  curve,  a 
few  minutes  each  day  will  keep  them  in  good  order. 

Very  many  men  and 
women  have  to  do  the  sort 
of  work  that  breaks  their 
finger  nails  and  stains  them, 
yet  such  people  often  take 
better  care  of  their  nails 
than  those  who  never  work 
hard  with  their  hands. 

Finger  nails  should  be  MAKING  THE  CRESCENT  SHOW 
curved  at  the  top,  but  toe  nails  should  be  cut  straight 
across.  This  keeps  the  corners  from  growing  into  the 
flesh  when  the  shoe  presses  the  toe.  Nobody  wants  an 
"  ingrowing  nail,"  and  we  can  prevent  them  if  we  cut  the 
nails  carefully  and  wear  shoes  that  are  not  too  small. 


QUESTIONS 

1.  Describe  a  well-cared- for  finger  nail. 

2.  Give  two  reasons  for  taking  care  of  the  nails. 

3.  How  may  dust  under  the  nails  give  us  disease? 

4.  Give  the  reasons  why  it  is  unwise  to  trim  the  finger  nails  with 
the  teeth. 

5.  What  do  you  need  to  use  in  nail  cleaning? 

6.  Tell  what  you  would  do,  step  by  step,  to   put  your  nails   in 
good  shape. 


CHAPTER  XXI 
CARING  FOR  THE  HAIR 

If  you  pull  out  a  hair  from  your  head,  you  will  see  how 
long  the  root  is  and  what  it  looks  like.    All  you  find  is  a 

bit  of  flesh  on  the  end  of  the  hair. 
The  picture  shows  what  that 
bit  of  flesh  really  is.  The  pit 
which  the  hair  stands  in  is  called 
the  hair  cell.  It  is  plain,  there- 
fore, that  when  you  pulled  out 
the  hair,  the  entire  lining  of  the 
cell  came  with  it ;  in  other  words, 
you  pulled  out  the  whole  won- 
derful cell  with  everything  that 
was  in  it.  That  is  what  you  see 
on  the  root  of  the  hair  in  your 
hand. 

The  truth  is  that  each  hair 
stands  alone  like  a  small  tele- 
graph pole  in  its  own  little  cell ; 

each  jg  separate  f  rom  every  Qther 

one;  each  has  its  own  muscle,  its  own  oil  glands,  and  you 

would  be  able  to  see  them  plainly  under  a  microscope. 

1 08 


A  HAIR  IN  ITS  CELL 
a,  hair  shaft;  3,  muscle;  c,  oil  gland 


CARING  FOR  THE  HAIR 


109 


As  a  rule,  hairs  do  not  stand  up  perfectly  straight. 
Instead,  each  slants  under  the  skin  as  the  picture  shows, 
and  the  way  the  cell  is  pointed  decides  which  way  the 
hair  shall  bend. 

When  a  cat  sees  a  dog  and  bristles  up  her  tail  three 
times  as  big  as  usual,  it  is  because,  at  the  very  same 
instant,  each  tiny  muscle 
pulls  each  tiny  hair 
into  standing  position. 
When  the  fright  is  over, 
the  muscles  let  go  little 
by  little,  and  those  thou- 
sands of  hairs  fall  quietly 
into  place  again. 

Take  the  hair  that  you 
pulled  from  your  own 
head  and  try  to  stretch 
it.  Look  at  its  size, — 
so  slender,  —  and  see 
how  hard  you  can  pull 
it  before  you  break  it.  Its  strength  will  surprise  you. 

Horsehair  ropes  are  especially  strong  and  useful,  but 
perhaps  the  most  interesting  hair  rope  in  the  world  is 
in  Japan.  It  was  made  from  the  hair  of  thousands  of 
women  who  wished  to  do  what  they  could  for  a  beautiful 
temple.  They  gave  their  long  black  hair  to  be  used  in 
making  a  rope  to  ring  the  bell  with.  This  rope  is  long 


HAIR  MUSCLES  AT  WORK 


HO  GOOD  HEALTH 

and  strong,  and,  unless  it  is  burned  or  destroyed  in 
some  such  way,  it  will  last  for  hundreds  and -hundreds 
of  years,  for  hair  does  not  decay  as  bones  and  flesh  do. 

In  the  British  Museum  in  London  there  is  a  wig 
made  from  human  hair.  The  priest  who  wore  it  lived 
over  three  thousand  years  ago,  yet  the  wig  does  not 
show  its  age. 

I  suppose  such  things  were  as  useful  then  as  now, 
and  no  doubt  the  same  kinds  of  hair  grew  on  the  same 
kinds  of  human  beings  and  animals.  Human  beings 
wanted  theirs  for  beauty  and  for  use,  while  animals 
needed  theirs  for  comfort  as  well  as  for  use,  and  both 
alike  needed  more  hair  in  cold  weather  than  in  warm 
weather. 

Notice  how  much  thicker  the  cat's  fur  is  in  winter 
than  in  summer.  Though  the  hair  of  the  human  being 
does  not  change  in  thickness  from  summer  to  winter,  we 
can  ourselves  make  some  difference  in  the  matter.  I  have 
heard  men  say :  "  I  must  not  have  my  hair  cut  to-day,  it 
is  too  cold ; "  and  no  one  thinks  of  having  his  hair  cut 
when  he  has  a  cold  already,  for  he  knows  it  will  be  a 
risk.  People  who  explore  in  cold  countries  let  their 
beards  grow  to  protect  their  throats.  A  football  player 
wears  long,  thick  hair  to  save  his  head  from  the  hardest 
bumps. 

It  is  probably  true  that  women  think  more  of  their 
hair  than  men  do,  because  it  makes  more  difference  with 


CARING  FOR  THE  HAIR  III 

their  looks.  Indeed,  a  woman  without  hair  on  her  head 
looks  about  as  queer  as  a  doll  without  her  curly  wig, 
yet  there  are  women  who  are  entirely  bald. 

I  once  knew  a  woman  who  was  so  ill  that  she  lost 
every  hair  on  her  head.  It  came  out  by  the  handful, 
and  at  the  same  time  her  eyelashes  and  the  hairs  of  her 
eyebrows  dropped  out  too. 

To  conceal  her  loss  she  covered  her  head  with  a  wig 
and  painted  her  eyebrows  the  color  of  her  false  hair. 
Unfortunately  she  could  do  nothing  for  her  eyelashes, 
so  her  eyelids  had  to  go  like  plain,  untrimmed  curtains. 

Every  woman  of  every  nation  and  tribe  likes  to  have 
a  fine  head  of  hair.  Even  a  man  seems  to  like  it  better 
when  there  is  hair  on  the  top  of  his  head,  and  I  suppose 
a  baldheaded  football  player  would  have  a  pretty  hard 
time  of  it.  The  question  for  us  all,  then,  is  how  to  get  a 
fine  head  of  hair  and  how  to  keep  it. 

Most  important  of  all  is  the  healthy  scalp,  and  very 
often  its  health  depends  upon  how  we  treat  it.  We  can 
do  two  things  to  help  make  it  vigorous. 

1.  Keep  it  clean. 

2.  Bring  fresh  blood  to  it  by  brushing  the 
hair  and  by  massaging  the  scalp. 

Most  heads  need  washing  about  twice  a  month,  but 
heads  are  like  hands  in  this  respect,  for  the  kind  of  work 
we  do  makes  a  difference  in  the  amount  of  washing  that 
is  needed.  A  child  often  needs  the  wash  once  a  week. 


112  GOOD  HEALTH 

Some  people  rub  a  raw  egg  into  the  scalp  before 
washing.  This  does  no  harm,  but  an  egg  on  the  head  is 
no  more  important  for  head  washing  than  an  egg  on  the 
hands  for  hand  washing.  Certain  other  things  are,  how- 
ever, very  necessary. 

Take  a  washbowl  of  warm  water  and  any  good  soap 
(I  myself  like  tar  soap  best),  make  a  good  lather,  and 
rub  it  into  your  scalp  with  your  ringers  or  a  brush  ; 
wash  the  head  and  hair  thoroughly;  then  rinse  it  in  a 
second  bowl  of  warm  water.  This  will  take  out  the  soap- 
suds. Next  wash  it  in  cold  water  quickly  to  prevent 
yourself  from  taking  cold  afterwards. 

Your  hair  is  now  clean  and  sweet.  Dry  it  with  towels 
if  you  are  a  boy;  if  you  are  a  girl  the  register,  the 
radiator,  or  the  stove  will  help  in  winter.  Do  not  go 
to  bed  with  damp  hair.  You  may  catch  cold. 

Washing  is  a  great  help,  but  exercise  of  the  scalp  is 
quite  as  important  for  any  head  of  hair.  To  get  it  brush 
your  hair  every  day  until  the  scalp  feels  warm  but  not 
sore.  Five  minutes  may  be  long  enough.  Also,  for  two 
or  three  minutes  each  day,  press  the  fingers  of  both  hands 
hard  against  your  head  through  your  hair  and  move 
the  scalp  back  and  forth  on  the  skull.  Do  this  in  one 
place  after  another  until  every  part  has  had  its  exercise. 
The  special  good  of  all  this  washing,  brushing,  and  exer- 
cise is  that  it  clears  away  the  dandruff,  thoroughly  cleans 
the  skin,  brings  the  blood  to  the  scalp,  and  makes  the  oil 


CARING  FOR  THE  HAIR  113 

glands  active.  Washing  and  exercise  are  indeed  the  best 
hair  tonics  we  can  have ;  many  a  man  has  secured  a 
better  head  of  hair  by  being  faithful  in  their  use. 

Girls  with  long,  thick  hair  are  sometimes  careless 
about  washing  their  heads;  they  do  not  know  how 
much  other  people  are  judging  them  by  the  looks  and 
the  odor  of  their  hair.  Washed  hair  is  light  and  fluffy, 
sweet  and  clean,  while  unwashed  hair  is  solid  and  heavy, 
neither  sweet  nor  clean. 

The  oil  glands  give  hair  all  the  oil  it  needs.  Don't 
put  on  any  more,  for  the  more  oil  there  is,  the  more 
dust  it  will  hold,  and  tidy  men  and  women  do  not  like 
to  use  their  heads  as  a  gathering  place  for  all  sorts  of 
microbes  that  are  lodged  in  the  dust  of  the  air. 

QUESTIONS 

1.  When  you  pull  out  a  hair,  what  comes  with  it? 

2.  How  many  hairs  are  there  in  each  cell? 

3.  What  other  things  are  in  the  same  cell? 

4.  What  is  it  that  pulls  up  the  hair  on  a  cat's  tail? 

5.  How  do  we  know  that  hair  is  durable? 

6.  What  is  the  objection  to  cutting  hair  on  a  cold  day? 

7.  What  two  things  must  be  done  in  order  to  have  a  healthy  scalp? 

8.  Describe  washing  the  head. 

9.  How  often  should  the  head  be  washed? 

10.  In  what  ways  do  washing  and  brushing  help  the  scalp? 

1 1 .  What  difference  is  there  in  the  looks  of  washed  and  unwashed  hair  ? 

12.  Why  is  it  better  not  to  put  oil  on  the  hair? 


CHAPTER  XXII 


THE  HEALTH  OF  THE  SKIN 

When  a  barefoot  boy  takes  a  needle  and  thread  and 
sews  stitches  in  the  skin  on  the  bottom  of  his  foot,  he 

does  not  intend  to  go 
deeper  than  the  out- 
side layer,  —  the  epi- 
dermis; yet  if  he  pricks 
himself,  he  knows  at 
once  that  he  has  gone 
through  the  epidermis 
and  put  his  needle  into 
the  inside  layer,  —  the 
dermis. 

If  no  blood  comes 
when  a  man  slices  off 
a  bit  of  skin  as  he 
shaves,  we  know  he  has 
cut  nothing  but  epider- 
mis ;  if  blood  does  flow, 
however,  we  know  he 
has  cut  the  dermis  too. 

The  truth  is  that  what  we  call  skin  is  made  up  of  two 

layers,  —  the  dermis,  that  holds  nerves,  sweat  glands,  and 

114 


TESTING  THE  EPIDERMIS 


THE  HEALTH  OF  THE  SKIN 


blood  vessels;  and  the  epidermis,  which  protects  them 
all  and  keeps  them  out  of  sight.  Each  layer  is  as  thin 
as  paper. 

After  you  have  had  a  warm  bath  some  day,  rub  your 
hand  hard  over  the  damp  flesh  and  see  how  much  you 
can  roll  up.  A  good  deal  of  it  is  dead 
epidermis,  which  should  be  rubbed  off. 
In  truth,  we  shed  our  epidermis  some- 
what as  a  snake  sheds  his  skin;  only  the 
snake  loses  all  his  skin  at  once,  while  we 
lose  ours  a  little  at  a  time.  More  than  that, 
his  dead  skin  can  do  no  harm  to  any  one, 
whereas  ours  may  carry  deadly  disease.  In 
fact,  scarlet  fever,  smallpox,  and  measles 
may  go  with  any  piece  of  epidermis  which 
peels  from  people  who  have  those  diseases. 
That  is  why  children  are  kept  out  of  school  SwEAT  GLAND 
until  they  are  quite  through  shedding  the  skin  they  had 
while  they  were  sick.  They  must  not  share  their  epider- 
mis and  their  disease  with  other  children. 

So  far  as  the  skin  is  concerned  the  sweat  glands  play 
an  important  part.  Each  separate  one  of  them  is  a  tiny 
twisted  tube  under  the  dermis.  It  runs  up  in  a  crooked 
fashion  through  both  layers  of  the  skin  and  gives  an 
extra  twist  or  two  just  before  it  comes  to  an  end  on  the 
surface  of  the  epidermis.  Each  pore  of  the  skin  that  you 
see  is  the  mouth  of  a  separate  sweat  gland.  These  glands 


Ii6  GOOD  HEALTH 

are  crowded  close  together  over  the  whole  body;  they 
work  fastest  when  we  are  warm,  and  the  perspiration 
that  they  pour  on  the  skin  needs  to  be  washed  off 
regularly. 

Now  notice  several  facts  about  this  perspiration. 

1.  It  is  a  mixture  of  water  and  waste  matter 
from  the  body. 

2.  The  water  evaporates  soon. 

3.  While  it  is  evaporating,  it  cools  the  skin. 

4.  After  it  has  evaporated,  the  waste  matter 
that  was  in  it  stays  on  the  skin. 

5.  This  waste  mixes  with  oil  from  the  oil 
glands,   bits   of    epidermis,   dust    from    our 
clothes  and  from  the  air,  and  stays  like  a 
snug,  thin  coat  on  the  outside  of  our  body 
from  head  to  heel. 

6.  Unless  it  is  washed  off  or  rubbed  off, 
this  coat  grows  thicker  every  day. 

7.  The  thicker  it  is,  the  less  perspiration 
will  get  through  it  to  cool  the  skin  and  to 
regulate  the  temperature  of  the  body. 

8.  When  the  temperature  of  the  body  can- 
not be  regulated  by  the  sweat  glands,  health 
itself  is  apt  to  suffer. 

9.  When    perspiration   is   checked,   some 
other  part  of  the  body  must  dispose  of  what 
should    have   gone   off   through    the    sweat 
glands. 


THE  HEALTH  OF  THE  SKIN  1 1 7 

This  list  of  facts  shows  that  unless  the  skin  is  well 
cared  for  it  gets  into  a  bad  state ;  yet  we  do  not  see  the 
thin,  outside  covering  of  waste  matter,  oil,  and  epider- 
mis until  there  is  dust  enough  in  it  to  give  a  brown 
color  to  the  skin.  Then  of  course  we  are  shocked  or 
distressed.  We  promptly  say,  "  That  child  needs  a  bath," 
or  "  That  boy  looks  as  if  he  had  n't  bathed  for  a  month." 

At  that  time  the  body  or  the  clothes  are  apt  to  give 
another  sure  sign  that  they  need  cleaning.  That  sign  is 
an  odor,  and  it  tells  the  story  as  plainly  as  if  it  screamed 
aloud. 

I  have  a  ten-year-old  niece  in  the  fourth  grade  of  a 
grammar  school,  and  she  calls  one  of  the  boys  in  her 
class  "  that  smelly  boy."  Yesterday  she  said :  "  I  hate 
to  stand  near  that  smelly  boy  at  the  blackboard."  What 
she  said  simply  shows  the  difference  there  is  in  children 
as  well  as  in  grown  people.  Some  are  clean  and  some  are 
unclean ;  some  are  washed  all  over,  and  some  are  washed 
in  spots ;  some  look  as  if  they  had  used  wash  cloth  and 
towel  so  vigorously  that  every  pore  of  the  skin  is  clean; 
others  are  so  dingy  round  the  neck  and  ears  that  it  seems 
as  if  they  hardly  know  what  soap  and  water  will  do. 

Indeed,  some  people  give  the  impression  of  being 
clean,  while  from  other  people,  in  spite  of  fine  clothes, 
there  may  be  an  odor  which  will  betray  them. 

Is  it  strange  then  that  washed  people  do  not  like  to 
have  unwashed  people  around?  The  fact  is  they  so 


Il8  GOOD  HEALTH 

thoroughly  dislike  having  them  near  that  they  can't 
help  showing  their  objection  sometimes.  Of  course 
this  hurts  the  feelings  of  the  unwashed;  still,  if  they 
are  bright  enough,  they  will  see  what  the  matter  is, 
adopt  the  habit  of  bathing  regularly,  and  join  the  army 
of  the  clean. 

For  the  sake  of  cleanliness  we  should  change  our 
underclothing  in  the  morning  and  at  night,  and  shake  it 
to  get  rid  of  bits  of  epidermis  and  waste  matter  from  the 
sweat  glands  which  cling  to  it.  A  hard  dry  rub  with  a 
coarse  towel  is  helpful. 

By  adding  to  this  a  warm  bath  once  a  week  any  one 
can  keep  the  skin  in  good  condition.  A  quick,  cold  bath 
every  morning  before  breakfast  is  good  for  most  healthy 
people.  It  does  as  much  as  anything  else  to  keep  one 
healthy.  Some  use  a  bath  tub,  others  use  a  washbowl; 
either  is  suitable.  Here  are  a  few  rules. 

1.  Take  your  cold  bath  in  a  warm  room. 

2.  Wet  the  skin  quickly. 

3.  Wipe  hard  and  dry  with  a  rough  towel 
until  the  skin  is  pink. 

4.  If  you  use  a  washbowl,  wash  and  wipe 
part  of  the  body  at  a  time.    This  will  keep 
you  from  taking  cold. 

5.  You  should  feel  warm  after  your  bath ; 
if  you  feel  cold  instead,  you  are  not  vigorous 
enough  to  take  daily  cold  baths. 


THE  HEALTH  OF  THE  SKIN  119 

My  niece  who  does  not  like  the  "  smelly  boy  "  takes 
her  cold  bath  every  morning  in  five  minutes.  This  sort 
of  quick  bathing  helps  the  body  resist  disease;  it  gives 
the  nerves  of  the  small  blood  vessels  such  vigorous, 
healthy  gymnastic  exercise  that  they  get  into  good 
habits  of  controlling  the  flow  of  the  blood  back  and 
forth,  and  the  better  they  do  this  the  less  likely  we  are 
to  take  cold.  If  possible,  before  taking  the  cold  bath, 
spend  five  minutes  in  giving  vigorous  exercise  to  arms, 
legs,  and  body.  This  will  help  immensely  in  making  the 
quick,  cold  bath  useful  to  you. 

For  warm  bathing,  remember  two  points : 

1.  If  you  take  the  bath  in  the  daytime, 
always  dash  the  body  with  cold  water  after- 
wards.   This  will  keep  you  from  taking  cold. 

2.  If  you  bathe  in  warm  water  just  before 
getting  into  bed,  you  do  not  need  the  cold 
dash,  for  the  bedclothes  will  keep  you  from 
taking  cold. 

Give  yourself  a  clean,  healthy,  vigorous  skin,  and  you 
will  grow  faster,  be  in  better  health,  and  be  less  likely  to 
take  cold. 

QUESTIONS 

1.  How  many  layers  are  there  to  the  skin? 

2.  Give  the  names  of  the  skin  layers.  • 

3.  What  is  the  use  of  the  epidermis? 


120  GOOD  HEALTH 

4.  What  diseases  may  go  with  bits  of  epidermis? 

5.  What  important  things  are  in  the  dermis? 

6.  What  does  the  sweat  gland  do? 

7.  Why  do  we  need  to  bathe? 

8.  What  should  we  do  to  escape  taking  cold  after  a  warm  bath? 

9.  What  are  the  important  things  to  think  about  when  we  take  the 
quick  cold  bath? 

10.  What  is  the  use  of  the  cold  bath  every  morning? 


CHAPTER  XXIII 
ALCOHOL  AND  COLD  WEATHER 

If  doctors  only  knew  of  some  safe  drink  that  would  make 
people  comfortable  no  matter  what  the  weather  might  be, 
everybody  would  keep  a  bottle  of  it  in  the  house. 

There  are  those  who  seem  to  think  that  almost  any 
kind  of  wine,  whisky,  or  beer  will  do  this ;  many  people 
are  quite  sure  that  when  the  weather  is  biting  cold  they 
really  need  some  one  of  these  alcoholic  drinks  to  keep 
them  warm. 

A  company  of  strong  men  thought  so  when  they  were 
traveling  across  the  western  plains  several  years  ago. 
There  were  twenty-six  of  these  men;  it  was  winter  and 
they  had  to  spend  a  terribly  cold  night  in  their  camp 
without  any  fire.  They  had  food  enough  and  plenty  of 
whisky;  but  one  of  the  men  knew  more  than  the 
others,  and  while  they  were  talking  about  what  they 
should  do  to  keep  warm,  he  said  that  for  one  thing  it 
was  not  safe  for  any  of  them  to  drink  whisky  that  night. 
He  even  went  so  far  as  to  say  that  they  were  far  more 
likely  to  freeze  if  they  drank  it. 

Two  of  his  friends  believed  him  and  the  three  took  no 
whisky  before  going  to  sleep ;  they  were  cold  in  the  night 


121 


122  GOOD  HEALTH 

but  they  were  not  very  uncomfortable.  Three  of  the 
other  men  drank  a  little;  they  were  much  colder  than 
the  first  men  but  they  did  not  freeze.  Seven  men  drank 
more  and  their  fingers  and  toes  were  frostbitten  by  morn- 
ing. Six  drank  a  good  deal  and  they  were  so  badly 
frozen  that  they  never  really  got  well  again.  Four  drank 
until  they  were  foolish  and  one  after  the  other  they  all 
died  three  or  four  weeks  afterwards.  The  last  three  men 
were  drunk  when  they  went  to  bed  and  by  morning  they 
were  frozen  to  death. 

Each  one  of  these  men  was  strong  the  day  before,  and 
each  had  the  same  number  of  blankets  that  night.  It 
seemed  to  be  just  the  whisky  and  nothing  else  that 
made  the  difference. 

One  of  the  men  in  the  party  wrote  to  a  medical  paper 
in  Cincinnati,  Ohio,  about  it,  and  the  point  he  made 
was  that  the  more  the  men  drank  the  more  they  suffered 
from  the  cold. 

A  great  many  people  believe  as  these  men  believed. 
They  say,  "  When  I  am  cold  and  take  whisky,  I  know 
it  is  good  for  me  because  it  makes  me  feel  warm."  Per- 
haps such  people  will  understand  what  the  matter  is  if 
we  explain  just  what  happens  when  a  man  drinks  alcohol. 

One  of  the  first  things  alcohol  does  —  if  a  man  takes 
enough  of  it  —  is  to  enlarge  the  small  tubes  that  carry 
the  blood  to  the  skin  all  over  the  body.  Now  if  these 
blood  vessels  are  enlarged,  more  blood  passes  through 


ALCOHOL  AND  COLD  WEATHER  123 

them,  and  the  skin  feels  warm  and  comfortable  for  a 
little  while.  Unfortunately,  however,  the  warmer  the  skin 
is  the  more  it  takes  from  the  real  heat  of  the  inside  of 
the  body.  The  outside  feels  warmer  after  a  man  drinks 
alcohol,  because  the  blood  is  there,  but  the  inside  is  just 
so  much  the  colder  to  make  up  for  it. 

For  our  best  health  it  is  most  important  that  the  tem- 
perature of  the  inside  of  the  body  should  remain  the  same 
day  and  night,  winter  and  summer.  Anything,  therefore, 
that  reduces  the  inside  heat  too  much  is  bad  for  us.  Now 
the  reason  a  man  does  not  notice  the  change  when  the 
inside  of  his  body  is  growing  colder  is  that  alcohol  is 
also  doing  another  thing.  It  is  making  the  nerves  less 
sensitive.  This  is  most  serious,  for  our  nerves  are  as 
important  to  our  body  as  an  engineer  is  to  his  train.  If 
the  engineer  of  a  train  is  stupid;  or  if  he  is  asleep,  the 
train  is  not  safe.  No  passenger  cares  to  travel  for  a 
moment  on  a  train  with  a  sleepy  engineer.  So  it  is 
with  the  body:  dreadful  things  may  happen  to  it  if  the 
nerves  are  too  dull  to  tell  us  when  we  are  in  danger. 

That  is  what  happened  to  those  men  in  their  camp. 
No  doubt  those  who  took  so  much  whisky  felt  a  good 
deal  warmer  when  they  went  to  bed  than  those  who  did 
not  take  any.  They  felt  so  warm  that  they  could  not 
imagine  they  had  disturbed  the  heat  regulation  of  their 
bodies;  they  did  not  know  they  were  in  danger.  Per- 
haps they  dreamed  they  were  warm  and  comfortable  even 


124  GOOD  HEALTH 

while  they  were  freezing  to  death.  They  did  not  know 
that  they  had  taken  something  that  would  put  the  heat 
machinery  out  of  order.  They  wanted  to  do  all  they 
could  to  keep  warm  and  safe,  but  they  were  ignorant 
and  it  turned  out  that  they  did  just  the  wrong  thing. 

I  suppose  that  hundreds  of  people  make  the  same  mis- 
take every  winter.  It  is  hard  for  them  to  believe  that 
their  feelings  deceive  them.  But  people  who  travel  in 
the  coldest  countries  learn  the  lesson  after  a  while. 

In  a  book  by  the  great  physician,  Dr.  Carpenter,  I 
read  that  there  was  a  crew  of  sixty-six  men  from  Den- 
mark who  tried  to  stay  in  Hudson  Bay  all  winter.  Now 
the  place  is  so  far  north  and  so  cold  that  the  men  wished 
to  do  everything  to  keep  warm ;  they  therefore  took  a 
load  of  alcoholic  drink  with  them  to  help  as  much  as 
possible.  No  doubt  they  thought  that  the  colder  it  was 
the  more  they  ought  to  drink,  for  that  is  just  the  mistake 
a  great  many  people  make. 

Nevertheless,  in  spite  of  everything,  these  men  died 
one  after  another,  and  by  the  end  of  winter  only  two 
were  alive.  At  another  time  a  crew  of  Englishmen  went 
to  the  same  place,  and  they  were  just  as  anxious  as  the 
others  to  keep  warm  and  to  keep  alive,  but  they  tried 
the  opposite  plan  about  alcoholic  drinks:  they  decided 
not  to  take  any  with  them.  There  were  only  twenty-two 
men  in  this  crew.  They  took  no  alcoholic  drinks,  and 
when  winter  was  over  they  sent  the  joyful  news  to  their 


ALCOHOL  AND  COLD  WEATHER  125 

friends  that  twenty  of  them  were  alive  and  well.  Only 
two  had  died. 

Nowadays  people  who  explore  the  coldest  countries 
are  very  careful  about  what  they  drink  there  and  just 
when  they  drink  it.  They  are  sure  that  it  is  not  best  to 
drink  anything  that  has  alcohol  in  it  while  they  are  well 
and  working  hard.  When  a  man  is  ill  the  doctor  should 
decide  what  is  to  be  done. 

If  Dr.  Hodge  could  have  taken  Bum  and  Tipsy  and 
Nig  and  Topsy  on  a  sledding  trip  to  Greenland,  and  if 
he  could  have  hitched  Nig  and  Topsy  to  one  sled  and 
Bum  and  Tipsy  to  the  other,  he  would  have  found  that 
Nig  and  Topsy  traveled  faster  than  Bum  and  Tipsy 
every  day,  went  farther,  and  carried  the  heavier  load. 

In  such  matters  as  this  it  is  about  the  same  with  men 
as  with  dogs. 

Dr.  Hayes  was  a  surgeon  who  went  with  Dr.  Kane  to 
explore  in  the  Arctic  regions.  Afterwards  he  said  that 
he  would  never  again  take  any  alcoholic  drink  with  him 
on  such  a  trip,  and  that  he  would  not  let  anybody  go 
with  him  who  had  ever  used  such  drinks.  He  said  he 
knew  from  experience  that  those  who  use  alcohol  cannot 
endure  the  cold  so  well  as  other  people. 

All  these  facts  show  that  the  man  who  wants  to  do 
the  thing  that  is  safest  for  his  health  and  the  man  who 
wants  to  do  the  best  work  he  can  in  cold  weather  need 
to  go  without  drinking. 


126  GOOD  HEALTH 

QUESTIONS 

1.  Tell  what  happened  to  the  party  of  men  crossing  the  western 
prairie. 

2.  Which  men  suffered  the  least  ?    Which  suffered  the  most  ? 

3.  Why  do  people  think  whisky  warms  them  ? 

4.  When  alcohol  enlarges  the  blood  vessels  of  the  skin,  what  hap- 
pens to  the  inside  temperature  of  the  body  ? 

5.  Tell  about  the  crew  of  sixty-six  men  who  went  to  Hudson  Bay. 

6.  What  did  they  drink  and  what  became  of  them  ? 

7.  What  was  the  story  of  the  crew  of  Englishmen  ? 

8.  If  Nig  and  Topsy  and  Bum  and  Tipsy  had  gone  to  Greenland, 
which  two  of  the  dogs  would  have  done  the  most  work  ? 


CHAPTER  XXIV 
ALCOHOL  AND   WARM   WEATHER 

Probably  somebody  will  say,  "Well,  then,  if  alcohol 
does  n't  keep  people  warm  in  cold  countries,  it  must  be 
just  what  they  need  when  they  are  too  hot  and  want  to 
cool  off  in  warm  countries." 

But  it  seems  that  alcohol  puts  the  heat  machinery 
out  of  order  even  faster  in  India  and  Africa,  where  it  is 
warm,  than  it  does  in  Greenland,  where  it  is  cold. 

Dr.  Parkes  was  a  famous  English  doctor.  He  was  also 
a  teacher  in  an  army  medical  school,  and  he  wanted  the 
soldiers  to  be  so  healthy  and  so  vigorous  that  they  would 
always  win  in  whatever  battle  they  were  fighting.  He 
knew  that  so  far  as  the  health  is  concerned,  it  makes  just 
as  much  difference  what  a  soldier  eats  and  what  he  drinks 
as  what  anybody  else  eats  and  drinks ;  and  he  knew  that 
when  soldiers  are  marching  in  terrible  heat,  and  when  the 
days  are  so  warm  that  brave  men  lose  their  courage  and 
their  strength,  they  ought  to  have  anything  in  the  world 
that  will  help  them.  He  therefore  tried  to  find  out  what 
things  did  the  soldiers  most  harm,  and  what  things  helped 
them  the  most.  He  studied  the  English  soldiers  in  India, 

and  he  saw  that  many  of  them  took  alcoholic  drinks. 

127 


128  GOOD   HEALTH 

Then  he  took  pains  to  notice  which  soldiers  were  the 
healthier,  and  which  made  the  better  fighters,  —  those 
who  d*ank  or  those  who  did  not  drink. 

He  heard  that  in  a  certain  regiment  there  were  four 
hundred  men  who  did  not  take  alcohol,  and  at  once  he 
began  to  keep  a  record  of  those  men  and  of  the  other 
men  in  the  same  regiment.  He  discovered  that  the 
men  who  did  not  drink  could  march  farther  without 
getting  tired,  fight  harder  without  running  away,  and 
live  longer  without  getting  ill.  After  that  he  always  said 
that  warm  countries  "are  precisely  the  climates  where 
alcohol  is  most  harmful."  Since  then  many  other  men 
all  over  the  world  have  said  the  same  thing. 

Sir  Charles  Napier  gave  an  address  to  a  company  of 
soldiers  in  India,  and  he  said:  "  Let  me  give  you  a  bit 
of  advice.  Don't  drink.  You  are  come  to  a  country 
where,  if  you  drink,  you  are  dead  men.  If  you  be  sober 
and  steady,  you  '11  get  on  well ;  but  if  you  drink  you  're 
done  for.  I  knew  two  regiments  in  this  country :  one 
drank,  the  other  did  n't  drink.  The  one  that  did  n't  drink 
is  one  of  the  finest  regiments  and  has  got  on  as  well  as 
any  regiment  in  existence.  The  one  that  did  drink  has 
been  all  but  destroyed." 

When  soldiers  are  ill  in  India  they  have  to  go  to  the 
soldiers'  hospital,  and  it  is  easy  to  find  out  there  which 
kind  of  men  get  sick  the  more  easily,  —  those  who  drink 
or  those  who  do  not  drink. 


ALCOHOL  AND  WARM  WEATHER  129 

By  studying  the  figures,  Dr.  Carpenter  learned  that  if 
a  man  drinks  he  is  three  times  more  likely  to  get  ill  and 
have  to  go  to  the  hospital  than  if  he  does  not  drink,  and 
that  after  he  is  in  the  hospital  the  man  who  drinks  is  far 
more  likely  to  die  than  the  man  who  never  drinks. 

Every  year  the  officers  of  the  armies  in  different  coun- 
tries of  the  world  are  finding  out  that  the  longer  their 
soldiers  go  without  alcoholic  drinks  the  better  they  can 
march  and  fight. 

In  1898  Lord  Kitchener  took  his  soldiers  on  the  long- 
est march  that  anybody  has  ever  written  about.  They 
were  in  Sudan,  Africa,  and  they  marched  across  the 
desert  sand  where  the  sun  is  blazing  hot.  More  than 
that,  when  they  reached  the  end  of  the  march  they  fought 
a  terrible  battle  —  and  they  conquered.  This  was  what 
people  call  a  total  abstinence  army,  which  means  that 
none  of  the  soldiers  took  any  alcoholic  drinks  whatever. 

Mr.  Stanley  was  a  great  traveler  in  Africa,  and  he  says 
that  in  such  warm  countries  no  one  should  dare  to  touch 
a  drop  of  alcohol  in  the  daytime.  Most  people  who  go 
off  hunting  in  Africa  and  India  believe  the  same  thing. 
They  say  that  if  a  man  is  in  the  habit  of  drinking  he  is 
not  so  strong  for  the  hunting  trip  and  not  so  likely  to 
hit  the  lions  and  the  tigers  when  he  sees  them. 

Thus  we  learn  that  alcohol  is  a  man's  enemy  in  cold 
countries  and  in  hot  countries,  in  winter  and  in  summer, 
when  he  is  well  and  when  he  is  ill. 


130  GOOD  HEALTH 

QUESTIONS 

1.  How  much  more  useful  is  alcohol  in  warm  countries  than  in 
cold  countries? 

2.  In  what  country  did  Dr.  Parkes  study  about  soldiers  and  alcohol? 

3.  What  did  he  learn  about  those  four  hundred  men? 

4.  What  did  he  say  about  warm  countries  and  alcohol? 

5.  What  did  Dr.  Carpenter  find  out  about  soldiers  in  the  hospital 
in  India? 

6.  What  did  Sir  Charles  Napier  think  about  alcohol  for  soldiers  ? 

7.  What  did  Lord  Kitchener's  total  abstinence  army  do? 


CHAPTER   XXV 

SOME   FACTS  ABOUT  THE   NOSE 

When  a  dog  wants  to  find  his  master,  his  nose  is 
often  quite  as  useful  as  his  legs.  He  puts  it  near  the 
ground  and  smells  his  master's  footsteps  as  fast  as 
he  can  run. 

Bloodhounds  can  find  a  burglar  in  the  same  way,  while 
wild  deer  can  smell  their  enemy  a  long  way  off  if  the  wind 
is  blowing  from  that  direction.  If  the  hunter  himself  had 
as  keen  a  nose  as  that,  I  suppose  it  would  help  him  in  his 
hunting,  but  it  would  make  it  that  much  harder  for  the 
deer  to  save  his  life. 

In  any  case  our  nose  is  as  useful  as  we  need.  It  tells 
us  even  in  the  dark  or  when  our  eyes  are  shut  which  flower 
is  a  rose  and  which  is  a  lily ;  it  warns  us  when  the  gas  is 
escaping  and  we  know  by  it  when  the  room  is  too  close, 
when  there  is  tobacco  smoke  in  it,  and  when  the  air  is 
impure  from  sewers  or  garbage  cans  or  soiled  things. 

Though  the  nose  is  so  useful,  it  is  not  always  beauti- 
ful. It  may  be  long  and  thin  like  a  knife  blade,  or  it 
may  be  short  and  thick  like  a  small  club ;  it  may  curve 
up  like  a  queer  little  handle,  or  it  may  bend  down  like 
a  broken-backed  man;  but  the  shape  does  not  change 


132  GOOD  HEALTH 

its  usefulness :  a  healthy  nose  is  a  busy  part  of  the 
breathing  machine,  and  it  is  well  made. 

Feel  the  bone  that  is  between  your  eyes:  it  is  hard 
and  firm  ;  you  cannot  move  it.  Now  take  hold  of  the  end 
of  your  nose :  see  how  you  can  bend  it  from  side  to  side 
like  a  piece  of  India  rubber.  If  the  whole  nose  were  solid 
bone  from  root  to  tip  there  might  be  broken  noses  at 
every  recess ;  but  the  part  that  is  hit  most  often  can  only 
be  hurt ;  it  cannot  break  because  it  is  made  of  something 
tough  and  limber  called  cartilage. 

The  nostrils  are  openings  of  tubes  that  admit  air  to  the 
lungs.  Feel  the  thin  partition  between  them ;  a  few  hairs 
are  inside  of  each  nostril  to  help  keep  the  dust  out. 

The  tear  tube  is  there  too.  It  runs  from  the  pink 
corner  of  the  eye  down  into  the  upper  part  of  the  nose, 
where  the  tears  go.  It  is  most  busy  and  most  useful 
when  you  cry.  Indeed,  the  reason  that  you  need  to  blow 
your  nose  very  often  just  then  is  that  a  tiny  stream  of 
salt  water  is  running  through  the  tear  tube  into  the  nose 
and  you  must  get  rid  of  it. 

Without  any  doubt  the  lining  of  the  nostril  is  as 
interesting  as  any  part  of  the  nose.  It  is  like  a  thin, 
delicate  lace  work  of  small  blood  vessels,  and  it  is  called 
the  mucous  membrane.  This  is  where  the  mucous  glands 
are,  and  they  send  out  a  thick  fluid  that  keeps  the  lining 
damp.  When  you  have  a  cold  in  the  head  it  is  these 
glands  that  do  the  extra  work  of  mucus  making.  Then 


SOME  FACTS  ABOUT  THE  NOSE 


133 


you  say,  "  My  nose  is  running,"  and  you  have  to  use 
your  handkerchief  every  few  minutes. 

In  the  case  of  such  a  cold  as  that  you  can  neither 
smell  nor  breathe  easily.  In  fact,  you  really  have  to  use 
your  mouth  for  breathing,  instead  of  your  nose,  which 
is  a  great  misfortune.  It  is  bad  for  your  health  and  bad 
for  your  looks.  I  have  seen 
children  sit,  and  stand,  and 
walk,  and  play  with  their  lower 
jaw  hanging  down  a  little. 
Probably  they  had  no  idea 
how  dull  and  foolish  it  made 
them  look,  and  certainly  they 
did  not  know  that  they  might 
injure  their  lungs  by  breath- 
ing in  that  way. 

Even  without  any  cold  the 
mucus  keeps  the  nose  SO  damp     WHERE  AIR  is  WARMED  AND 
that  the  air  itself  grows  warm 

and  damp  on  its  way  to  the  lungs.  This  is  precisely  what 
the  lungs  need.  Then,  too,  between  the  damp  skin  and 
the  hairs  of  the  nose  the  dust  and  the  microbes  are 
almost  sure  to  be  caught  and  stopped  from  going  any 
farther. 

From  all  this  it  is  very  plain  that  we  must  do  every- 
thing we  can  to  keep  from  catching  cold,  because  we 
cannot  afford  to  have  our  nose  stopped  up  for  even 


134  GOOD  HEALTH 

one  day.  If  you  have  no  cold  in  your  head,  yet  can- 
not breathe  when  your  mouth  is  shut,  something  is 
the  matter,  and  your  father  should  take  you  to  see 
the  doctor. 

There  are  three  reasons  why  we  should  breathe  through 
the  nose  and  not  through  the  mouth. 

1.  The  nose  warms  the  air  for  the  lungs. 

2.  The  nose  helps  the  air  to  be  damp  before 
it  gets  to  the  lungs. 

3.  The  nose  cleans  the  air  for  the  lungs. 

It  is  easy  to  see  that  a  bad  cold  in  the  head  stops  all 
the  work  of  the  nose.  When  the  air  comes  through  the 
mouth  to  the  lungs  it  is  not  so  clean  from  dust  and 
microbes  as  it  ought  to  be,  it  is  not  damp  enough,  and 
it  is  not  so  warm  as  when  it  goes  through  the  nose. 
The  sensible  thing,  then,  for  any  person  to  do  is  to  keep 
from  catching  cold,  to  shut  his  mouth,  and  to  breathe 
through  his  nose. 

Still  there  is  another  extreme:  when  we  try  not  to 
catch  cold  we  may  actually  get  the  nose  too  dry.  That 
is  apt  to  happen  in  winter  when  people  live  in  houses 
that  are  heated  by  stoves,  furnaces,  or  steam  pipes.  Often 
in  such  places  the  air  is  so  dry  that  the  nose  cannot  help 
getting  dry  too.  You  know  how  it  is  with  wet  towels 
over  a  register  or  near  a  radiator:  the  hot  air  takes  all 
the  water  out  of  them,  and  they  are  dry  in  no  time. 
Hot  air  does  the  same  thing  to  any  damp  nose  that 


SOME  FACTS  ABOUT  THE  NOSE  135 

happens  to  be  in  the  same  room.  The  objection  to  this 
is  that  when  the  lining  of  the  nose  is  very  dry  it  cannot 
catch  the  dust  and  microbes  in  the  air  and  keep  them 
from  the  lungs;  neither  can  it  keep  the  air  that  is  to 
pass  into  the  lungs  damp  enough ;  in  fact,  it  is  about  as 
well  to  breathe  through  the  mouth  as  through  such  a 
dry  nose. 

But  what  shall  we  do  about  all  this?  We  must 
remember  that  the  more  water  the  air  takes  from  other 
things  the  less  it  will  take  from  us.  For  this  reason 
some  people  put  open  dishes  of  water  in  their  rooms,  or 
plants  that  grow  in  water,  or  wet  fern  balls.  Anything 
is  useful  that  gives  water  to  the  air. 

In  my  own  home  water  is  heated  near  the  furnace  in 
the  basement.  Damp  air  from  it  then  mixes  with  the 
pure  air  from  out  of  doors  after  the  latter  has  become 
warm,  and  they  rise  together  to  the  different  rooms  of 
the  house. 

If  you  have  a  healthy,  useful  nose,  try  to  keep  it  so. 
Some  of  the  rules  for  the  health  of  the  nose  are  the  same 
as  those  for  the  health  of  the  skin. 

1.  Take  a  quick  cold  bath  every  morning. 

2.  Change  your  clothes,  your  shoes,  and  your 
stockings  when  they  are  damp. 

3.  Do  not  sit  in  a  draft. 

4.  Breathe  pure  air  by  day  and  by  night. 


136  GOOD  HEALTH 

QUESTIONS 

1.  In  what  way  is  the  nose  specially  useful  to  dogs? 

2.  What  warning  do  we  get  from  the  nose? 

3.  Describe  the  tear  tube. 

4.  Describe  the  lining  of  the  nose. 

5.  What  do  the  mucous  glands  do? 

6.  In  what  way  does  the  damp  mucus  of  the  nose  help  the  lungs? 

7.  Give  three  reasons  for  breathing  through  the  nose. 

8.  Why  is  it  better  to  have  damp  air  in  a  room? 

9.  How  can  we  keep  the  air  in  a  room  damp  in  winter? 
10.  Give  rules  for  the  health  of  the  nose. 


CHAPTER  XXVI 
OUR  LUNGS 

If  your  clothes  are  very  loose  around  the  waist,  take 
a  long,  deep  breath  and  see  what  happens. 

Your  ribs  rise  higher  and  higher;  you  get  larger 
around  the  chest;  your  waist  is  bigger.  While  you  are 
doing  this  you  really  feel  as  if  you  were  working  with 
your  body.  And  so  you  are:  your  muscles  are  pulling 
up  the  ribs  and  you  are  stretching  out  the  lungs  with 
the  air  you  put  into  them.  In  fact,  our  lungs  are  like  a 
pair  of  useful  bellows:  we  pull  up  the  ribs  and  the  air 
rushes  in;  we  drop  them  down  and  the  air  streams  out 
of  the  nose  and  mouth. 

These  wonderful  bellows  work  day  and  night,  when 
we  are  asleep  and  when  we  are  awake,  from  the  time  we 
are  born  until  we  die ;  but  how  little  we  think  about 
them !  how  little  we  do  to  take  care  of  them ! 

Fortunately  they  are  in  a  strong  cage  with  bones  on 
every  side.  The  backbone  is  behind,  the  ribs  are  on  the 
sides,  and  the  breastbone  is  in  front. 

Some  day  when  your  father  does  not  know  about  it 
watch  to  see  how  many  times  he  draws  his  breath  every 
minute.  Some  men  breathe  fifteen  times  a  minute;  an 

137 


138 


GOOD  HEALTH 


elephant  breathes  only  eight  times,  and  I  have  heard  that 
a  mouse  breathes  a  hundred  and  twenty  times  each  min- 
ute. This  breathing  is  so  important  that  we  should  die 
in  a  few  minutes  if  the  air  could  not  get  into  our  lungs. 
Then,  too,  the  more  air  they  hold  the  better  it  is  for  us. 

Each  lung  is  some- 
what like  a  big  sponge. 
If  you  could  take  a 
piece  of  one  of  them 
in  your  hand  and 
squeeze  it  hard,  you 
would  make  a  large 
slice  look  very  small. 
The  reason  is  plain. 
The  main  part  of  each 
lung  is  a  bunch  of 
branching  tubes.  It 
looks  like  a  tree  hang- 
ing downwards;  only 
in  the  tree  of  the  lungs  every  twig  and  branch  is  hollow, 
and  you  know  a  bunch  of  hollow  tubes  can  be  squeezed 
up  small. 

Look  at  the  picture  carefully  and  you  will  see  that 
the  largest  tube  is  at  the  top.  This  is  the  windpipe. 
Now  press  your  finger  up  and  down  in  front  of  your 
neck  and  you  will  find  several  ridges.  They  are  rings 
of  cartilage  which  hold  the  windpipe  out  round  and 


THE  AIR  TUBES  OF  THE  LUNGS 


OUR  LUNGS  139 

firm.  All  the  air  you  breathe  goes  from  your  nose  or 
mouth  down  to  the  lungs  by  this  road ;  but  when  a  bit 
of  food  or  water  tries  to  make  the  same  journey,  we 
cough  and  almost  strangle  in  trying  to  get  it  out.  At 
the  same  time  we  know  that  the  trouble  is  with  the  little 
swinging  door  of  cartilage  between  the  windpipe  and 
the  food  pipe.  It  did  not  shut  down  soon  enough  and 
the  food  went  the  wrong  way. 

You  can  see  that  the  windpipe  has  two  branches: 
one  goes  to  one  lung  and  one  to  the  other.  After  that, 
each  of  these  branches  divides  and  keeps  on  subdivid- 
ing into  smaller  and  smaller  branches  and  twigs,  until 
the  real  skeleton  of  the  lung  is  a  beautiful  tree  like 
the  one  in  the  picture. 

The  air  sacs  are  too  small  to  show  in  the  picture,  but 
there  is  one  of  them  on  the  end  of  each  twig.  They  are 
so  tiny  that  nobody  sees  them  without  a  microscope,  and 
there  are  so  many  of  them  that  all  the  blood  of  the  body 
comes  to  them  and  goes  away  again.  It  brings  carbon 
dioxid  gas  when  it  comes,  and  it  takes  oxygen  when  it 
goes  away. 

That  is  why  the  lungs  are  so  important:  the  blood 
must  have  oxygen  for  the  body  to  use.  The  reason  for 
breathing  is  now  plainer  than  ever :  whenever  we  take  a 
good  breath  of  fresh  air  we  send  a  quantity  of  this  oxy- 
gen into  our  lungs;  and  of  course,  the  more  we  draw 
in  the  deeper  down  it  goes  and  the  more  the  blood  gets. 


140  GOOD  HEALTH 

Any  man,  woman,  or  child  can  see  that  every  tube  of 
the  lungs  ought  to  be  kept  open  so  that  the  air  may  go 
in  and  out  easily  and  give  the  blood  a  chance  to  get  all 
the  oxygen  it  needs;  yet  I  have  seen  girls  who  looked 
as  if  they  had  never  read  a  book  on  hygiene  in  their 
lives,  for  they  dressed  as  if  they  did  not  know  they  had 
any  lungs.  You  can  tell  such  a  girl  at  a  glance.  As  a 
rule  her  waist  is  very  small. 

Some  people  used  to  think  that  a  small  waist  made 
a  woman  look  delicate  and  beautiful,  but  in  these  days 
we  are  sure  that  it  makes  her  look  ignorant  and  out  of 
shape.  We  think  so  because  we  know  what  she  has 
done  to  the  inside  of  her  body.  She  has  squeezed  up 
hundreds  and  thousands  of  air  tubes  and  air  sacs  until 
they  are  like  a  useless  sponge.  When  that  happens, 
neither  the  lungs  nor  the  blood  can  possibly  get  as 
much  air  as  they  need. 

The  worst  of  it  is  that  the  less  air  our  lungs  get  the 
easier  it  is  for  them  to  become  diseased.  When  every 
air  sac  is  full  of  air,  the  blood  takes  the  oxygen  out  of 
it  as  fast  as  possible ;  it  also  leaves  its  load  of  carbon 
dioxid  there  in  place  of  the  oxygen. 

There  are,  then,  two  things  that  the  lungs  do  for  us  all 
the  time :  they  take  oxygen  into  the  body  with  the  air 
for  the  blood  to  use,  and  they  send  carbon  dioxid  out  of 
the  body  because  the  blood  is  through  with  it. 


OUR  LUNGS  141 

QUESTIONS 

1.  What  happens  to  ribs  and  chest  when  you  take  a  long  breath? 

2.  When  do  the  lungs  work? 

3.  What  do  lungs  look  like? 

4.  What  is  the  name  of  the  largest  tube? 

5.  What  is  it  for? 

6.  What  is  at  the  end  of  each  one  of  the  smaller  tubes? 

7.  What  gas  does  the  blood  bring  to  these  cells?    What  gas  does 
it  take  away? 

8.  What  does  lacing  do  to  the  lungs? 

9.  What  harm  is  it  if  the  lungs  do  not  get  air  enough? 
10.    What  two  things  do  the  lungs  do  for  us? 


CHAPTER  XXVII 

LUNGS,  DUST,  AND  TOBACCO  SMOKE 

The  next  time  you  play  tag  or  any  other  exciting 
game  that  makes  you  run,  notice  your  breathing. 

You  will  see  that  the  harder  you  jump  or  run  the 
harder  your  lungs  will  have  to  work.  You  will  have  to 
breathe  fast ;  you  will  fill  your  lungs  with  air  over  and 
over  again ;  and  even  then  perhaps  you  will  say,  "  Oh, 
I  'm  all  out  of  breath ! "  But  that  sort  of  exercise  is  the 
very  best  thing  for  your  lungs.  It  makes  them  grow. 

The  next  best  thing  is  to  stand  out  of  doors  every 
morning  and  take  ten  deep  breaths  of  fresh  air,  and 
every  night  before  going  to  bed  do  the  same  thing. 
While  you  are  doing  this  there  are  several  things  to 
think  about.  In  the  first  place  stand  straight  like  a 
soldier,  holding  your  chest  forward.  A  sponge  that  is 
crowded  tight  will  not  hold  much  water,*  and  air  cells 
that  are  doubled  together  will  not  hold  much  air.  The 
first  duty  then  is  to  hold  the  body  in  such  a  way  that 
every  air  cell  will  be  open  and  free. 

Now  breathe  slowly  until  the  lungs  are  really  full,  but 
do  not  strain  them ;  then  breathe  the  air  out  as  slowly 

as  you  breathed  it  in. 

142 


LUNGS,  DUST,  AND  TOBACCO  SMOKE  143 

Do  this  faithfully  every  morning,  and  do  it  whenever 
you  think  about  it  during  the  day.  The  breastbone  is 
not  hard  when  you  are  young,  and  if  you  are  careful 
to  hold  the  chest  up  and  breathe  as  you  should  the 
bones  will  have  a  fine  curved  shape,  and  in  the  end  you 
will  have  a  big,  healthy,  splendid  chest  and  lungs. 

You  know  what  sort  of  air  you  ought  to  breathe,  and 
you  know  about  oxygen  and  carbon  dioxid.  There  is 
also  dust  in  the  air,  which  is  very  injurious  to  the  lungs. 
They  cannot  always  save  themselves  from  this,  though 
they  do  a  good  deal  at  it  by  a  wonderful 
arrangement  which  they  have. 

On  the  inside  of  the  largest  tubes  of 
the  lungs  and  inside  the  nose  there  are 
thousands  and  thousands  of  little  threads  ClLIA  READY  FOR 
called  cilia.  These  cilia  are  like  the  tip 
ends  of  the  very  finest  cobweb  silk,  and  they  are  mov- 
ing all  the  time  like  tiny  paddles.  They  are  busy  day 
and  night,  through  winter  and  through  summer,  for 
their  duty  is  to  keep  dust  and  microbes  from  getting 
into  the  lungs. 

They  are  the  air  cleaners  of  the  tubes,  just  as  certain 
men  are  the  street  cleaners  of  the  city.  When  there  is 
dust  in  the  air  they  paddle  hard  in  such  a  way  as  to 
drive  it  out  of  the  lung  tubes  and  out  of  the  nose.  They 
manage  very  well  most  of  the  time ;  still,  when  the  lungs 
belong  to  a  man  who  not  only  lives  in  the  dust  all  day 


144  GOOD  HEALTH 

but  also  breathes  with  his  mouth  open  all  night,  the  cilia 
have  far  too  much  to  do :  more  dust  gets  in  than  they 
can  drive  out,  and  it  rushes  past  them,  goes  into  the 
most  delicate  tubes  and  air  cells,  stays  there,  and  does 
mischief.  This  explains  black  lungs. 

The  other  day  a  doctor  told  me  that  he  had  just 
examined  the  lungs  of  a  man  who  had  died  in  Chicago. 
He  said  that  the  man  had  always  lived  in  the  dustiest 
part  of  the  city,  and  that  after  he  died,  when  the  doctors 
cut  his  lungs  open,  they  noticed  how  dark  they  were. 
Besides  that,  certain  spots  were  as  black  as  ink. 

No  doubt  the  cilia  had  worked  as  hard  as  they  could, 
but  the  man  had  probably  breathed  in  more  dust  than 
they  could  drive  out,  and  it  may  be  he  had  breathed 
with  his  mouth  open. 

Though  dust  is  bad  enough,  microbes  in  the  lungs 
are  even  worse.  Yet  how  hard  it  is  to  keep  microbes 
out  of  the  dust !  We  learned  that  in  the  ninth  chapter. 
We  also  learned  that  microbes  of  consumption  may  give 
the  disease  to  healthy  people  and  that  we  must  do  all  we 
can  not  to  breathe  them. 

In  dusty  streets  and  smoky  places  it  is  especially 
important  to  breathe  through  the  nose,  because  the  nose 
cilia  will  help  the  lung  cilia;  but  in  the  very  dustiest 
places  of  all  we  should  use  a  veil  or  a  respirator  to 
sift  out  as  much  dust  as  possible.  We  should  also  avoid 
talking  in  such  places. 


LUNGS,  DUST,  AND  TOBACCO  SMOKE  145 

Our  lungs  are  not  only  like  the  branches  of  a  tree 
but  they  are  like  two  big  bottles  with  one  small  mouth. 
When  the  cork  is  in  a  bottle  the  water  cannot  evaporate 
fast.  It  is  so  with  the  lungs:  when  the  mouth  is  shut 
the  tubes  do  not  dry  very  quickly, —  and  for  the  sake 
of  the  cilia  they  need  to  be  damp. 

That  is  one  of  the  good  reasons  for  not  smoking 
tobacco.  When  a  man  sends  warm,  dry  tobacco  smoke 
into  his  lungs,  as  some  people  do,  he  does  three  harmful 
things  to  his  breathing  machine. 

1.  He  keeps  the  cilia  too  dry. 

2.  He  sends  such  a  cloud  of  smoke  against 
the  cilia  that  a  great  deal  of  it  manages  to 
get  into  the  lungs. 

3.  There  is  a  poison  in  the  tobacco  that  a 
man  smokes,  and  when  the  smoke  gets  into 
the  lungs,  of  course  the  poison  gets  there 
too.    The  cilia  cannot  send  it  out. 

The  lungs  are  so  important  and  so  delicate,  and  the 
cilia  are  such  good  friends  of  ours,  that  we  should  help 
them  in  every  way. 

QUESTIONS 

1.  What  does  exercise  do  to  breathing? 

2.  What  good  does  deep  breathing  do  to  the  lungs? 

3.  What  kind  of  air  should  be  used? 

4.  What  are  cilia  like? 


146  GOOD  HEALTH 

5.  What  do  they  try  to  do? 

6.  What  happens  when  the  cilia  have  too  much  to  do? 

7.  What  is  worse  for  the  lungs  than  mere  dust? 

8.  How  shall  we  protect  our  lungs  in  dusty  places? 

9.  Why  should  we  keep  from  talking  on  a  dusty  street? 

10.  What  harm  does  tobacco  smoke  do  to  cilia? 

11.  Mention  three  ways  in  which  warm,  dry  tobacco  smoke  may 
injure  a  man's  lungs. 


CHAPTER   XXVIII 

TEETH 

Once  every  week  I  meet  three  pretty  girls  and  two  big 
boys  who  belong  to  the  same  family.  They  have  soft  brown 
hair,  merry  eyes,  and  they  dress  well,  but,  whenever  they 
smile  they  show  such  yellow  teeth  that  I  feel  like  saying, 
"  Children,  children,  why  don't  you  wash  your  teeth  ? " 

Whenever  one  of  the  girls  gets  a  new  hat,  or  one  of 
the  boys  buys  a  suit  of  clothes,  my  first  thought  is, 
"  You  poor  child !  you  wish  to  look  fine,  and  you  think 
you  look  quite  fine  already,  but  a  toothbrush  would 
help  you  more  than  anything  else  in  the  world."  The 
trouble  with  their  teeth  is  that  they  never  wash  them. 

I  have  a  young  lady  friend  with  a  funny  little  pointed 
mouth.  Her  teeth  are  clean,  to  be  sure,  but  the  upper 
front  ones  reach  over  the  lower  ones  so  that  they  never 
help  each  other  when  she  chews.  When  this  young 
woman  was  a  little  girl  she  sucked  her  thumb  every 
night  when  she  went  to  bed.  She  even  sucked  it  by  day- 
light too,  sometimes,  so  that  little  by  little  she  changed 
the  shape  of  her  upper  jaw,  and  now  if  you  should  see 
her  you  would  think  that  she  had  done  all  she  could  to 

make  herself  look  like  a  squirrel. 

147 


148  GOOD  HEALTH 

I  know  of  a  boy  with  a  mouth  full  of  good-looking 
teeth.  The  second  picture  shows  how  straight  and  even 
they  are  now ;  but  when  he  was  eight  years  old  some  of 
his  teeth  were  as  crooked  as  the  cobblestones  on  an  old 
down-town  city  street.  The  first  picture  shows  how  they 
looked  at  that  time. 

This  troubled  his  father  so  much  that  he  took  him 
to  a  dentist  who  was  a  clever  man,  and  he  managed  to 
make  them  grow  in  the  right  way. 
The  boy  can  now  chew  his  food 
better  than  he  did  before,  because 
the  upper  teeth  and  the  lower  teeth 
are  opposite  each  other  and  work 
together. 

Go  to  the  mirror.  Look  at  your 
own  teeth  and  answer  these  three 
questions  about  them.  Are  they 

THE  WAY  THE  TEETH    dean  ?    Are  they  crooked  ?    Do  they 
GREW 

look    as    if    you    had    ever    sucked 

your  thumb  or  your  fingers? 

If  they  are  crooked  the  dentist  can  help  you,  and  you 
ought  to  go  to  him  before  the  jawbone  gets  harder.  It  is 
easier  and  quicker  work  to  straighten  young  teeth  than 
old  teeth. 

If  your  teeth  are  not  clean,  you  must  wash  them ;  and 
if  you  know  of  any  child  that  sucks  his  thumb,  you  must 
help  him  to  stop  it. 


TEETH 


149 


Now  count  your  teeth,  and  ask  your  father  to  let 
you  count  his  teeth  too.  He  ought  to  have  thirty-two 
altogether.  Probably  some  of  your  baby  teeth  have  fallen 
out,  but  when  you  were  six  years  old  you  had  ten  teeth 
above  and  ten  below.  Just  now 
you  are  getting  your  new  teeth, 
and  they  must  last  the  rest  of  your 
life,  for  when  the  second  teeth  are 
gone,  no  others  will  come  to  take 
their  place,  and  false  teeth  are  a 
nuisance. 

Look  carefully  and  you  will  see 
that  each  tooth  has  one  just  like  it 
on  the  opposite  side  of  the  same  jaw.  AFTER  THE  TEETH  WERE 

The  shapes  of  your  front  teeth  STRAIGHTENED 
and  your  back  teeth  are  different,  as  they  have  different 
kinds  of  work  to  do,  but  every  tooth  in  the  world  is 
made  in  the  same  way.  The  soft  part  is  in  the  center, 
and  that  is  where  the  nerves  are  also.  It  is  called  the 
"pulp."  Hard  bone  is  around  it,  while  outside  of  all 
comes  the  enamel.  This  is  the  hardest  thing  in  the  body, 
yet  it  is  the  only  part  of  the  tooth  we  have  to  be  care- 
ful about.  We  must  do  two  things  to  preserve  it. 

1.  Keep  it  clean. 

2.  Keep  it  from  getting  cracked  or  broken. 

The  reason  for  both  these  directions  is  the  same:  we 
must  save  our  teeth  from  the  microbes. 


150 


GOOD  HEALTH 


I  have  a  queer-looking  string  of  teeth  in  my  attic. 
Once  these  teeth  were  growing  in  the  mouth  of  a  heathen 
man  in  Micronesia,  but  his  enemy  caught  him  and  killed 
him,  pulled  out  every  one  of  his  teeth,  and  threaded 
them  on  a  string.  I  suppose  this  enemy 
knew  that  when  teeth  are  not  in  the  mouth 
they  will  last  for  ages  and  ages,  and  prob- 
ably he  wanted  his  children  and  grand- 
children to  believe  that  once  upon  a  time 
he  had  been  strong  enough  to  kill  his  foe. 
If  the  man  had  lived  until  now,  his  teeth 
would  have  been  ruined  long  ago,  and  it 
would  have  been  the  microbes  that  did 
it,  for  they  can  destroy  the  teeth  in  any 
.6  man's  mouth;  but  when  teeth  are  clean 
and  dry,  threaded  on  a  string,  and  packed 
away  in  the  attic,  no  microbe  touches 
them. 

This    teaches    us   a   great   lesson:    the 
cleaner  we  keep  our  teeth  the  longer  they 
will  last.    Microbes  go  wherever  there  is 
a,  nerve ;  6,  bone ;    any  fooc[   ancj  moisture,    and   the  longer 

c,  enamel  . 

the  food  stays  in  one  spot  the  more  the 
microbes  will  gather  just  there.  They  will  enter  any 
crack  and  work  their  way  deeper  and  deeper  toward 
the  nerves  in  the  pulp.  When  they  reach  far  enough 
we  suffer  and  have  to  go  to  the  dentist. 


TEETH 


TEETH  151 

No  crack  is  too  small  for  microbes  to  find  and  enter. 
If  you  cut  your  finger  the  flesh  will  mend  itself,  but  the 
enamel  of  the  tooth  can  never  grow  together  again  after 
we  have  cracked  it.  That  is  why  we  should  not  crush 
nuts  or  any  other  hard  thing  with  our  teeth;  we  can- 
not afford  to  crack  the  enamel  that  protects  them  and 
saves  them  from  microbes. 

Even  when  there  are  no  cracks,  if  bits  of  food  stay  in 
one  spot  long  enough  the  microbes  will  not  only  make  a 
hole  for  themselves  just  there,  but  after  that  hole  is  once 
made,  they  will  go  in  without  asking  your  permission 
and  do  the  greatest  mischief. 

We  can  save  ourselves  from  these  teeth  microbes  in 
only  one  way,  and  that  is  by  keeping  the  teeth  as  clean 
as  possible.  Of  course  we  cannot  thread  them  on  a 
string  and  put  them  in  the  attic  to  keep  dry,  but  we  can 
do  several  other  things  that  are  more  sensible. 

1.  Get    a   toothbrush    that    is    just    stiff 
enough  not  to  hurt  your  gums.    The  bristles 
should   not  be  too   near  together,   because 
you  want  them  to  go  between  your  teeth. 

2.  Have  some  tooth  powder. 

3.  Use  toothbrush,  powder,  and  water  every 
morning;    scrub   every   part   of   your  teeth 
thoroughly;    you  will    have   to    screw   your 
brush  around  pretty  well  to  do  it,  yet  only 
in  this  way  will  you  dislodge  the  microbe. 


152  GOOD  HEALTH 

4.  Every  night  before  you  go  to  bed  take 
a  piece  of  soft  silk  thread  and  draw  it 
between  as  many  teeth  as  you  can.  This  is 
better  than  a  toothpick.  You  will  get  a 
speck  of  food  almost  every  time  you  pull  the 
thread  through. 

If  you  can  wash  your  teeth  after  each  meal,  that  will 
be  better  yet ;  but  use  the  powder  only  once  a  day. 

If  you  have  poor  teeth,  go  to  the  dentist  twice  a  year. 
This  will  save  you  from  pain  and  will  make  your  teeth 
last  much  longer. 

QUESTIONS 

1.  What  sort  of  people  sometimes  have  unwashed  teeth? 

2.  What   does   sucking   the    thumb   and    fingers   do   to   the  jaw 
sometimes? 

3.  What  can  a  dentist  do  to  crooked  teeth? 

4.  What  is  the  outside  of  the  tooth  called? 

5.  What  two  things  must  we  do  to  the  enamel? 

6.  Why  must  we  keep  the  enamel  clean  and  unbroken? 

7.  What  harm  do  microbes  do  to  the  teeth  when  they  are  not 
perfectly  dry  and  perfectly  clean  ? 

8.  What  does  that  teach  us? 

9.  What  do  you  need  to  use  to  clean  teeth  with? 
10.  How  often  should  you  wash  them? 


CHAPTER  XXIX 

EATING 

I  know  a  farmer  who  never  hires  a  man  to  help  him 
work  on  the  farm  until  he  has  seen  him  eat.  He  says 
he  can  tell  by  the  way  the  man  eats  whether  he  is  likely 
to  work  well  or  not. 

We  are  apt  to  think  that  a  man  is  healthy,  vigorous, 
and  able  to  work  if  he  has  a  good  appetite ;  and  when 
we  hear  a  boy  say,  "  I  am  as  hungry  as  a  bear,"  we  are 
quite  sure  that  he  is  well,  while  we  also  suspect  that  he 
is  growing  fast. 

It  is  a  good  sign  to  feel  hungry.  In  fact,  that  is  the 
way  the  body  rings  the  bell  to  tell  us  that  it  needs  food 
to  make  flesh  and  brains  out  of.  If  a  boy  never  felt 
hungry,  he  might  be  so  busy  with  his  tops,  his  balls,  and 
his  books  as  to  forget  his  eating  entirely.  If  he  did  not 
eat,  he  would  grow  thinner  and  weaker  day  by  day  until 
he  was  nothing  but  skin  and  bone  and  unable  to  walk, 
and  at  last  he  would  stop  living  entirely.  That  is  what 
happens  when  people  starve  to  death. 

Even  when  people  have  food  enough  they  make  great 
mistakes  about  eating.  Every  child  should  know  four 
things  in  this  direction. 

153 


154  GOOD  HEALTH 

1.  What  to  eat. 

2.  When  to  eat. 

3.  How  to  eat. 

4.  How  much  to  eat. 

First  of  all,  however,  he  needs  to  know  a  little  about 
the  part  of  the  body  that  uses  the  food.  He  must  bear  in 
mind  the  important  fact  that  it  is  a  long  tube,  beginning 
with  the  mouth,  enlarging  as  a  stomach,  then  becoming  a 
tube  again.  Parts  of  it  are  straight  and  parts  are  twisted ; 
parts  are  large  and  parts  are  small ;  but  every  mouthful 
of  food  we  swallow  takes  the  same  road  through  it 

The  next  time  you  eat,  notice  just  what  happens. 
You  might  try  an  experiment  first:  wipe  your  tongue 
perfectly  dry  and  put  a  lump  of  sugar  on  it.  You  will 
be  surprised  to  find  that  you  cannot  taste  the  sugar  with 
a  dry  tongue.  This  is  true  of  other  kinds  of  food,  for  the 
fact  is  it  is  the  saliva  in  our  mouths  that  helps  us  taste 
anything.  Yet  the  saliva  has  even  more  important  work 
to  do. 

Put  a  piece  of  bread  into  your  mouth.  Perhaps  you 
want  to  swallow  it  at  once,  but  it  is  too  hard  and  dry ;  so 
you  crush  it  between  your  teeth  and  bite  it  into  smaller 
and  smaller  pieces ;  your  tongue  turns  it  over  and  rolls 
it  around,  while  you  keep  on  chewing,  and  all  the  while 
the  bread  is  getting  damp  and  soft. 

That  is  the  main  use  of  saliva :  it  gets  the  food  ready 
for  swallowing.  Perhaps  the  wonder  is  where  all  the 


EATING 


155 


liquid  comes  from.  There  are  little  pockets  under  the 
tongue  and  in  the  sides  of  the  mouth;  and  the  more 
saliva  we  need  the  faster  these  pockets  make  it  and 
send  it  out  for  us  to  use. 

We  know  how  it  looks :  it 
is  a  thick  kind  of  water,  but 
it  is  very  different  from  the 
water  we  drink.  Any  kind 
of  water  will  make  bread  soft, 
but  saliva  is  the  only  kind 
that  can  get  food  into  the  best 
condition  for  the  stomach  to 
use.  The  truth  is  that  the 
saliva  actually  helps  digest 
the  food ;  that  is  why  we  need 
to  take  small  mouthfuls  at  a 
time,  and  chew  each  mouth- 
ful until  it  is  wet  through  and 
through  with  the  saliva  and 
turned  into  a  smooth,  thick 
pudding  with  not  a  lump  in 
it.  At  that  point  it  is  ready 
to  be  swallowed. 

It  is  a  mistake  to  drink  while  we  are  chewing, 
for  real  water  weakens  the  saliva.  Do  not  drink  until 
you  have  swallowed  the  mouthful  you  have  been 
chewing. 


WELL  FED  AND  GROWING 


156  GOOD  HEALTH 

We  talk  a  great  deal  about  eating,  but  there  are  only 
three  things  that  we  can  do  about  it:  we  put  the  food 
into  our  mouths;  we  chew  it;  we  swallow  it.  After 
that  the  long  food  tube  of  the  body  does  everything  else. 
Each  part  of  this  tube  seems  to  be  a  special  station  that 
does  some  special  thing  to  the  food. 

First  comes  the  mouth  that  holds  it  and  chews  it.  Next 
is  the  food  pipe  that  does  the  swallowing.  This  tube 
sends  the  food  into  a  queer-shaped  bag  that  we  call  the 
stomach,  and  there  it  stays  for  two  or  three  hours,  while 
the  muscles  pull  it  in  every  direction  and  send  the  food 
round  and  round. 

In  the  midst  of  all  this  a  thick  kind  of  clear  liquid, 
called  gastric  juice,  comes  out  of  the  lining  of  the  stom- 
ach and  makes  the  food  as  soft  as  pea  soup. 

It  is  about  ready  for  the  blood  now,  but,  on  the  way, 
it  must  next  go  into  the  longest  and  most  twisted  part  of 
the  food  tube.  This  is  about  twenty  feet  long  in  a  man, 
and  is  folded  into  small  compass  below  the  stomach. 

The  dissolved  part  of  the  food  passes  through  the  lin- 
ing of  the  tube,  and  after  that  the  blood  carries  it  to  any 
place  that  needs  it  most,  —  to  the  bones,  the  skin,  the 
hair,  the  lungs,  and  everywhere  else  where  it  is  needed. 

Even  with  the  best  of  chewing  there  is  always  some 
waste,  and  this  has  to  pass  out  of  our  bodies.  It  is 
exceedingly  important  that  we  get  rid  of  it  every  day. 

Now  we  are  ready  for  questions  about  food. 


EATING  157 

1.  What  to  eat.     Most   of   the   food   we 
have    on  our  tables    is  good  for  us.     Milk 
and  eggs,  fresh  meat,  cereals,  bread,   vege- 
tables, and  fruits,  —  the  stomach  uses  them 
all;    but    the    time    of    the    year    makes   a 
difference   about   what   is   best  for  us.     In 
winter  we  need  more  butter,  fat  meat,  and 
such  things  to  help  keep  us  warm;  in  sum- 
mer, more  vegetables  and   fruit  are  better, 
with  less  meat. 

A  little  candy  is  good  for  almost  every- 
body, if  we  eat  it  at  mealtime,  but  it  is  not 
good  for  us  between  meals. 

2.  When  to  eat.    If   you   are    strong,  eat 
three  times  a  day,  and  be  regular.    Do  not 
eat  between  the  meals.    The  stomach  works 
hard  and  needs  to  rest  as  much  as  a  hard- 
working boy.    If  you  are  not  strong,  eat  less 
at  each  meal,  but  eat  oftener.    In  any  case  be 
sure  to  eat  at  regular  times. 

3.  How  to  eat.    Eat  slowly  and  chew  the 
food  until  it  is  soft  like  pudding  or  cream. 
Never  drink  in  the  midst  of  chewing.    Even 
milk  should  be  swallowed  slowly  enough  to 
let  the  saliva  mix  with  it,  for  otherwise  it 
turns  to  curds  in  the  stomach  and  is  slow 
in  digesting. 


158  GOOD  HEALTH 

4.  How  much  to  eat.  If  you  are  healthy 
and  have  been  chewing  carefully,  eat  until 
you  stop  feeling  hungry.  Never  eat  until 
you  feel  stuffed. 

The  boy  who  works  and  plays  and  studies  hard  needs 
more  food  than  his  delicate  mother  who  reads  and  sews 
all  day  in  a  warm  room.  Besides  that,  he  is  growing  and 
she  is  not. 

QUESTIONS 

1 .  What  does  a  good  appetite  show  ? 

2.  How  much  tasting  can  you  do  with  a  dry  tongue? 

3.  What  does  this  show? 

4.  What  is  the  particular  use  of  saliva? 

5.  Where  does  it  come  from? 

6.  How  do  you  know  when  you  have  chewed  anything  long  enough? 

7.  What  does  the  stomach  do  with  food  ? 

8.  How  does  the  food  get  into  the  blood  at  last? 

9.  What  are  some  of  the  things  that  we  may  eat? 

10.  When  shall  we  eat? 

11.  How  shall  we  eat? 

12.  How  much  shall  we  eat? 


CHAPTER   XXX 
ALEXIS  ST.  MARTIN  AND  ALCOHOL 

Many  years  ago  there  was  a  young  man  in  Canada 
who  was  wounded  in  his  stomach  by  a  bullet.  Perhaps 
this  was  not  so  very  strange,  for  the  fellow  belonged  to 
the  American  Fur  Company  and  he  hunted  fur-covered 
animals  for  a  living.  The  really  strange  part  of  the  affair 
was  this  :  the  bullet  went  into  his  stomach  in  such  a  way 
that  it  did  not  kill  him,  although  it  tore  the  flesh  so  badly 
that  it  left  a  wide  opening.  Indeed,  this  opening  was  so 
large  that  it  could  never  grow  together  again.  You  know 
most  cuts  heal  up  after  a  while,  but  all  this  one  did  was 
to  stop  bleeding  and  get  healed  around  the  edges.  It 
never  did  more  than  that. 

The  result  was  that  from  that  time  on,  as  long  as  the 
hunter  lived,  there  was  an  opening  through  the  side  of 
his  body  into  his  stomach.  It  was  two  and  a  half  inches 
around,  and  there  was  a  piece  of  the  lining  of  the  stomach 
that  hung  down  over  the  opening  like  a  valve  and  cov- 
ered it  up.  If  anybody  wanted  to  look  into  the  man's 
stomach,  and  if  Alexis  St.  Martin  (that  was  the  hunter's 
name)  would  let  him  do  it,  all  that  was  necessary  was  to 
push  the  valve  back  with  the  finger  and  peep  in. 

159 


160  GOOD  HEALTH 

Now  Dr.  Beaumont  was  a  physician  who  lived  in  the 
town  where  the  shooting  accident  happened.  He  was 
acquainted  with  Alexis  St.  Martin,  and  as  he  was  anxious 
to  know  just  how  the  stomach  works  when  it  is  trying 
to  digest  food,  he  invited  the  young  man  to  come  and 
live  in  his  house  and  let  him  keep  watch  of  his  eating. 

I  suppose  this  was  the  first  time  in  the  history  of  the 
world  that  a  doctor  had  had  a  chance  to  look  into  the 
stomach  of  a  live  man  whenever  he  wished  to  see  what 
was  going  on  there.  Dr.  Beaumont  was  able  to  do  this 
for  several  years,  because  St.  Martin  stayed  with  him  a 
long  time. 

Fortunately  for  everybody  the  man  was  healthy  and 
enjoyed  eating;  he  chewed  and  swallowed,  and  drank 
water  or  milk  or  whisky  just  as  Dr.  Beaumont  advised. 
In  fact  he  seemed  to  be  willing  to  eat  anything  the  doc- 
tor gave  him,  and  to  eat  much  or  little  according  as 
Dr.  Beaumont  wished  to  make  his  experiments,  and  so  it 
came  about  that  on  certain  days  he  ate  one  thing  at  a 
meal,  while  on  other  days  he  ate  several  different  kinds 
of  things  at  a  meal. 

As  these  experiments  went  on  day  after  day,  nothing 
that  the  young  man  ate  or  drank  escaped  Dr.  Beaumont's 
eyes.  He  watched  the  food  digest  after  each  meal,  and 
found  out  precisely  how  long  it  took  St.  Martin's  stomach 
to  get  anything  ready  to  go  on  into  the  next  part  of  the 
long  food  tube.  He  also  learned  what  kinds  are  the 


ALEXIS  ST.  MARTIN  AND  ALCOHOL  161 

easiest  to  digest,  and  he  knew  that  what  was  good  for 
St.  Martin  was  good  for  other  men  too. 

As  it  happened,  Dr.  Beaumont  was  a  doctor  in  the 
United  States  army.  He  therefore  decided  that  this  was 
just  the  time  to  see  whether  it  was  best  for  a  man  to  put 
alcohol  into  his  stomach  every  day.  He  knew  that  if 
alcohol  could  help  anybody  it  would  certainly  be  good 
for  soldiers,  and  I  suppose  he  wanted  to  be  sure  about 
this  so  as  to  be  able  to  advise  soldiers  to  use  it  if 
it  was  really  going  to  make  them  braver  or  stronger 
or  healthier. 

On  the  other  hand,  if  wine  or  beer  or  whisky  and  such 
things  were  likely  to  do  more  harm  than  good,  he  wanted 
to  know  that  too,  so  as  to  be  on  the  safe  side  and  advise 
soldiers  against  using  anything  of  the  kind. 

Before  this  time  doctors  could  only  judge  about  alco- 
hol by  the  way  men  felt  and  acted  after  they  drank  it. 
Nobody  had  seen  how  the  stomach  itself  looked  and 
acted  when  men  put  alcohol  into  it. 

Even  when  Bum  and  Tipsy  used  alcohol,  Dr.  Hodge 
could  not  tell  what  the  drink  really  did  to  their  stomachs, 
for  there  was  no  hole  for  him  to  look  through.  He  only 
knew  that  it  made  the  dogs  weaker  than  other  dogs  and 
not  so  brave. 

Dr.  Beaumont  now  proposed  to  find  out  something 
more  than  this,  and  fortunately,  when  he  asked  Alexis 
St.  Martin  whether  he  would  be  willing  to  have  his 


1 62  GOOD  HEALTH 

stomach  used  for  the  experiments,  St.  Martin  said,  "Yes, 
certainly." 

One  interesting  thing  to  remember  is  that  Bum  and 
Tipsy  had  to  take  alcohol  every  day  until  Dr.  Hodge 
could  tell  by  their  actions  what  was  happening.  But  St. 
Martin  did  not  have  to  take  so  much :  when  Dr.  Beau- 
mont looked  into  the  stomach  he  saw  exactly  what  the 
alcohol  did  when  it  got  there,  so  he  did  not  have  to  give 
it  long  enough  to  do  the  man  any  very  great  harm. 

First  of  all  he  gave  St.  Martin  good  food  without  any^ 
alcohol  in  it,  and  at  this  time  he  noticed  that  when  he 
gave  him  the  food  the  inside  lining  of  the  stomach  was 
of  a  pink  color  and  perfectly  healthy.  The  gastric  juice 
was  healthy  too ;  it  was  thin  and  clear,  without  any  special 
color,  and  it  did  its  work  well. 

That  is  the  way  the  stomach  acted  when  St.  Martin 
took  food  but  did  not  drink  alcohol.  But  now  the  young 
man  took  alcohol  for  several  days,  while  of  course  he  had 
his  regular  food  besides.  Everybody  was  especially  inter- 
ested in  the  case,  and  the  doctor  kept  on  examining  the 
stomach  each  day.  I  think  he  was  surprised  to  find  that 
whenever  he  looked  in  the  lining  was  redder  than  it  was 
the  time  before ;  then  there  were  sores  on  it ;  after  that 
the  sores  were  worse  and  blood  came  from  them. 

When  he  saw  how  things  were  going  Dr.  Beaumont 
took  some  of  the  gastric  juice  from  the  stomach  (he 
could  get  it  out  easily  by  putting  a  tube  in  through  the 


ALEXIS  ST.  MARTIN  AND  ALCOHOL  163 

opening)  and  noticed  that  it  was  not  clear  and  thin  as  it 
was  before.    It  had  thick  and  ropy  mucus  in  it. 

On  another  day  he  took  out  more  of  the  gastric  juice 
and  found  a  little  blood  in  it  too.  This  seemed  to  come 
from  the  sore  places. 

At  first  St.  Martin  could  not  tell  from  his  feelings  that 
anything  was  the  matter  with  his  stomach.  He  simply 
had  to  believe  Dr.  Beaumont,  for  of  course  he  himself 
could  not  stretch  his  neck  far  enough  over  to  look  through 
the  opening  into  his  own  stomach.  But  after  a  while 
he  did  not  feel  so  well ;  he  was  dizzy  and  his  face  had 
a  yellow  color. 

Dr.  Beaumont  tried  his  experiments  over  and  over 
again  at  different  times,  and  in  the  end  he  decided 
two  things. 

1.  Alcohol  made  the  lining  of  St.  Martin's 
stomach    sore    and    unhealthy,   so   that   the 
gastric  juice  was  changed,  and  after  that  it 
could  not  digest  the  food  so  well. 

2.  A  man's  stomach  may  have  sores  in  it 
even  when  the  man  himself  does  not  know 
anything   about  them.    This  means  that  a 
man  cannot    tell  by  his   feelings  what  the 
alcohol  is  doing  to  his  stomach. 

If  any  one  had  the  same  kind  of  sores  on  the  outside 
of  his  body  that  St.  Martin  had  in  his  stomach,  he  would 
do  all  he  could  to  get  rid  of  them;  because,  even  if  a 


1 64  GOOD  HEALTH 

man  did  not  feel  these  sores  at  the  time,  he  would  know 
that  they  would  do  him  harm  and  that  he  would  not  feel 
so  well  later.  They  would  injure  his  body  though  he 
might  not  know  what  the  matter  was. 

When  Dr.  Beaumont  had  found  out  all  that  he  needed 
to  know,  he  stopped  giving  alcohol  to  St.  Martin ;  where- 
upon the  lining  of  his  stomach  grew  more  healthy  every 
day,  until  at  last,  when  the  doctor  looked  in  one  morning, 
he  saw  that  it  was  quite  well  again. 

Afterwards,  when  he  wrote  a  book  about  these  experi- 
ments, he  said,  "  The  use  of  ardent  spirits  always  pro- 
duces disease  of  the  stomach,  if  persevered  in." 


QUESTIONS 

1.  Who  was  Alexis  St.  Martin? 

2.  What  happened  to  him  ? 

3.  What  did  Dr.  Beaumont  wish  to  learn? 

4.  How  did  he  make  the  food  experiments? 

5.  What  did  he  decide  to  find  out  about  alcohol? 

6.  Before  that  time  how  did  any  one  know  what  alcohol  does  to  a 
man's  stomach? 

7-    When  the  inside  of  St.  Martin's  stomach  was  healthy,  what  was 
its  color? 

8.  After  taking  alcohol  awhile,  what  change  was  there  in  the  color? 

9.  What  other  bad  signs  did  the  doctor  discover  ? 
IO.  What  did  he  say  in  his  book  about  using  alcohol? 


CHAPTER  XXXI 

THE  EXERCISE  WE  NEED 

Give  special  attention  at  this  time  to  the  connection 
between  your  breathing  and  your  exercise.  Notice  how 
quietly  you  breathe  before  you  start  to  run ;  then  go 
with  a  rush  around  the  block,  or  walk  up  four  flights  of 
stairs  at  a  brisk  pace,  and  notice  your  breathing  again. 
At  the  end  of  the  exercise  you  will  find  that  your  lungs 
are  working  hard  ;  you  may  even  be  panting  as  a  dog 
does  when  he  runs  behind  a  carriage. 

The  fact  is  that  the  harder  we  use  certain  muscles 
of  our  bodies,  the  more  air  the  body  needs;  while  the 
more  it  needs,  the  harder  the  lungs  try  to  get  it. 

Now  it  is  the  work  of  the  large  muscles  that  compels 
the  body  to  call  for  the  most  air.  However  long  and 
however  hard  you  exercise  the  small  muscles  of  your 
hand  by  opening  and  shutting  your  fingers,  you  can 
never  get  out  of  breath  from  doing  it ;  but  by  making 
the  large  muscles  of  your  legs  move  energetically  enough 
to  race  around  the  block,  you  can  make  your  lungs  draw 
in  all  they  can  possibly  hold.  It  is  the  work  of  the  large 
muscles,  then,  that  forces  the  lungs  to  supply  the  body 

with  unusual  quantities  of  life-giving  oxygen.  Remember 

165 


1 66 


GOOD  HEALTH 


that  point.  Here  is  another  point  quite  as  important. 
When  you  come  into  the  school  building  to-morrow 
morning,  if  you  count  your  pulse  at  the  foot  of  the  stairs 
(provided  that  you  have  not  been  running  just  before 
that),  you  will  find  it  beating  quietly.  But  walk  rapidly 

to  the  top  of  the  building 
and  count  the  rate  of  your 
heart  beats  again  for  a 
whole  minute,  and  you  will 
notice  a  great  change;  your 
pulse  will  now  be  pounding 
violently. 

The  experiment  shows 
that  exercise  increases  not 
merely  the  breathing  but 
also  the  circulation  of  the 
blood  in  the  body. 

The  easiest  way  to  feel 

the  pulse  is  to  put  the  hand 
FEELING  THE  PULSE  Qn    the    gide     of    the    wrist 

toward  the  thumb.  There  you  may  count  from  seventy 
to  one  hundred  pulse  beats  a  minute.  Sometimes  hard 
exercise  drives  the  pulse  up  to  one  hundred  and  fifty, 
but  this  is  too  fast.  At  other  times,  when  one  is  lying 
very  quiet,  having  been  still  a  long  time,  it  will  beat 
much  slower  than  seventy;  and  it  is  then  that  the 
heart  does  its  resting. 


THE  EXERCISE  WE  NEED 


I67 


In  every  case  the  heart  beats  because  the  muscles 
which  are  working  must  have  more  blood ;  and  the  heart 
meets  the  demand  by  pumping  the  blood  into  them  as 
promptly  as  possible. 

Moreover,  with  circulation  as  with  respiration,  it  isn't 
so  much  the  use  of  the  small  muscles  as  the  use  of  the 


large  muscles  that  makes 
the  heart  work.  You  can 
increase  the  heart  rate  a 
trifle  by  using  the  hand 
vigorously,  but  move- 
ments of  the  body  and 
movements  of  the  legs,  as 
in  running,  increase  the 
circulation  very  much  more 
than  exercise  of  the  small 
muscles. 

Exercise  also  tends  to 
make  the  muscles  harder. 
Take  hold  of  your  right 
upper  arm  with  your  left 

hand;  clinch  the  fist  of  your  right  hand  as  hard  as  possible; 
slowly  bend  the  right  arm,  and  you  will  feel  the  muscle 
of  that  arm  increasing  in  size.  This  is  because  it  is  get- 
ting shorter.  If  you  do  this  a  good  many  times  each 
day,  the  muscle  itself  becomes  harder ;  that  is,  it  has  less 
fat  in  it  and  is  better  adapted  for  doing  hard  work. 


HARDENING  A  MUSCLE 


1 68 


GOOD   HEALTH 


Muscle  that  is  used  also  tends  to  grow  larger.  It  is 
interesting  to  measure  the  size  of  one's  arm  at  the 
beginning  of  a  year  and  then  again  at  the  end  of  the 

year,  and  see  how  much  it 
has  grown  in  size,  if  exercise 
has  been  taken. 

Much  more  important, 
however,  than  either  growth 
in  hardness  or  size  is  growth 
in  strength.  If  you  take 
hold  of  a  bar  that  is  fastened 
as  high  as  you  can  reach 
and  pull  your  body  up  so 
that  your  chin  is  over  the 
bar,  the  muscles  of  your 


HE    STRENGTHENS    HIS    ARMS 


arms  and  certain  muscles  of 
the  back  are  doing  hard 
work.  A  boy  who  can  do 
this  but  once  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  term  can  easily, 
at  the  end  of  the  term,  —  if  he  will  practice  three  or  four 
minutes  night  and  morning, —  do  it  five  or  six  times.  It 
is  not  worth  while  to  do  it  for  more  than  this  length  of 
time,  for  there  is  no  advantage  in  having  arms  that  are 
strong  unduly  in  proportion  to  the  rest  of  the  body. 

That  which  happens  to  the  muscles  of  the  arm  when 
they  are  used  in  this  way  happens  to  all  other  muscles 


THE  EXERCISE  WE  NEED  169 

when  similarly  used.  No  muscle  can  help  growing 
bigger  and  stronger  if  it  is  used ;  whereas,  if  it  is  not 
used,  it  is  just  as  sure  to  grow  smaller  and  weaker. 

Another  point  about  exercise  is  that  it  increases  one's 
appetite  and  one's  digestion  of  food.  This  is  accom- 
plished very  slowly,  but  a  person  who  is  working  or 
who  is  out  of  doors  a  great  deal  will  need  more  food 
than  one  who  sits  still  most  of  the  time. 

The  man  who  wishes  to  succeed  in  those  athletic 
sports  which  depend  on  strength,  quickness,  or  endur- 
ance trains  for  it ;  that  is,  he  uses  exercises  which  increase 
the  circulation  of  his  blood  and  which  make  the  muscles 
harder,  larger,  stronger,  and  quicker  in  their  movements, 
for  these  exercises  make  a  man  more  healthy  in  every  way. 

Not  only  this,  but  the  more  he  practices,  the  better 
can  he  do  each  particular  thing,  for  muscles  learn  les- 
sons as  truly  as  children  learn  them. 

Perhaps  the  most  important  reason  for  having  gym- 
nastics in  school  is  that  the  body  may  learn  to  hold 
itself  in  the  correct  position  and  thus  prevent  curvature 
of  the  spine.  This  curvature  often  comes  from  bending 
over  school  desks  so  much  of  the  time. 

You  will  notice  that  your  school  gymnastics  give 
more  work  to  the  big  muscles  of  the  back  and  the  neck 
than  to  the  smaller  muscles  of  the  arms.  The  reason  is 
that  the  back  must  be  straightened,  and  the  exercises  are 
to  keep  the  muscles  strong  enough  to  hold  the  backbone 


1 70  GOOD  HEALTH 

in  its  natural  position.  If  they  succeed,  we  may  have 
the  kind  of  carriage  of  the  body  that  military  men  have ; 
that  is,  we  may  be  erect  and  vigorous. 

Good  health  is  closely  related  to  standing  straight. 
I  do  not  mean  that  every  person  who  stands  as  he 
should  is  healthy,  and  that  every  person  who  stands 
crooked  is  unhealthy ;  but  I  do  mean  that  standing 
straight  helps  one  to  be  healthy  as  well  as  to  look 
healthy.  To  sit  in  a  bad  posture  tends  to  interfere  with 
respiration,  digestion,  and  circulation.  That  is  why  a 
person  who  sits  or  bends  over  constantly  feels  so  tired 
and  cross  at  the  end  of  the  day;  the  different  organs 
of  his  body  have  had  to  do  their  work  in  a  cramped 
position,  and  they  could  not  do  it  satisfactorily. 

A  person  should  never  sit  still  longer  than  an  hour  at  a 
time.  Once  in  a  while,  he  should  stand  up  and  take  a  two- 
minute  exercise  to  increase  circulation  and  respiration, 
to  straighten  his  back  and  to  cultivate  good  feelings. 

Exercise  is  good,  but  one  can  take  too  much  of  it. 
Many  people  overdo  in  athletic  work.  I  have  seen  sev- 
eral basket-ball  teams  and  several  relay  teams  who  after 
they  became  expert  played  so  many  games  and  ran  so 
many  races  that  the  boys  were  seriously  overworked,  — 
so  much  so  that  it  took  them  years  to  recover. 

A  hard  relay  race  should  not  be  run  oftener  than 
once  a  week,  and  a  team  should  play  no  more  than  one 
hard  basket-ball  game  a  week. 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL   LIST 

The  reference  books  are  grouped  under  the  chapters  to  which  they  belong. 

CHAPTERS   I-VI,    AIR   AND   VENTILATION 

HARRINGTON,   CHARLES,   Practical  Hygiene  (Second  Edition)  chaps,  ii 

and  v.     1902. 

NOTTER,  J.  L.,  Treatise  on  Hygiene,  chaps,  i  and  iii.     1900. 
RICHARDS  and  WOODMAN,  Air,  Water,  and  Food.    1901. 
SMITHSONIAN  REPORT,  The  Composition  of  Expired  Air.    1895. 

CHAPTERS   VII-X,   MICROBES,   DUST,   AND   TOBACCO   CHEWING 

HODGE,  C.  F.,  Nature  Study  and  Life,  pp.  471-477.    1902. 
KOTELMANN,  LuDWiG,  School  Hygiene,  chap.  vi.    1899. 
PRUDDEN,  T.  M.,  Dust  and  its  Dangers.   1901. 

SEDGWICK,  WILLIAM  T.,  Principles  of  Sanitary  Science  and  the  Public 
Health.    1902. 

CHAPTERS   XI-XIII,    SLEEP 

CARPENTER,  WILLIAM  B.,  Principles  of  Human  Physiology,  p.  609. 
KOTELMANN,  L.,  School  Hygiene,  pp.  187,  225,  and  231.    1899. 

CHAPTERS   XIV  AND   XV,   THE   EYE 

KOTELMANN,  L.,  School  Hygiene,  chap.  xi.     1899. 
MARTIN,  H.  N.,  The  Human  Body,  chaps,  xxxii  and  xxxiii.    1896. 
PYLE,  W.  L.,  Personal  Hygiene.    1901. 

TODD,  C.  F.,  Sanitation  Relative  to  Sight  and  Hearing  (an  article  in  the 
St.  Louis  Medical  Journal,  April,  1903). 

171 


172  GOOD  HEALTH 


CHAPTERS   XVI   AND    XVII,   ANIMALS   AND  ALCOHOL 

HODGE,  C.  F.,  Physiological  Aspects  of  the  Liquor  Problem.  Report  of  the 
Sub-committee  of  the  Committee  of  Fifty  to  investigate  the  Liquor 
Problem,  vol.  i.  1903. 

CHAPTERS    XVIII    AND    XIX,    THE   EAR 

AYERS,  HOWARD,  Biological  Lectures. 

MARTIN,  H.  N.,  The  Human  Body,  chap,  xxxiv.    1896. 

PYLE,  W.  L.,  Personal  Hygiene.    1901. 

CHAPTERS   XX-XXII,    THE    FINGER   NAILS,   THE   HAIR, 
AND    THE    SKIN 

MARTIN,  H.  N.,  The  Human  Body,  chap,  xxviii.    1896. 
PYLE,  W.  L.,  Personal  Hygiene.    1901. 

CHAPTERS    XXIII   AND    XXIV,    ALCOHOL   IN   COLD   WEATHER 
AND    IN    HOT    WEATHER 

CARPENTER,  WM.  B.,  The  Use  and  Abuse  of  Alcoholic  Liquors. 
NOTTER,  J.  L.,  Treatise  on  Hygiene,  pp.  411  and  412.    1900. 

CHAPTERS    XXV-XXVII,   THE   NOSE   AND   THE   LUNGS 

MARTIN,  H.  N.,  The  Human  Body,  chap.  xxvi.    1896. 
PYLE,  W.  L.,  Personal  Hygiene.    1901. 

CHAPTERS   XXVIII   AND    XXIX,   THE   TEETH   AND   EATING 

MARTIN,  H.  N.,  The  Human  Body,  chaps,  xxii-xxiv.    1896. 
PYLE,  W.  L.,  Personal  Hygiene.    1901. 

CHAPTER   XXX,   ALEXIS    ST.  MARTIN   AND    ALCOHOL 

BEAUMONT,  WILLIAM,  Experiments  on  the  Gastric  Juice  and  the  Physiology 
of  Digestion. 

CHAPTER   XXXI,   THE   EXERCISE  WE   NEED 
GULICK,  L.  H.,  Physical  Education  by  Muscular  Exercise.     1904. 


GLOSSARY 


Key:  fate,  senate,  fat,  arm,  all,  ask;  mete,  e"vent,  met,  her;  ice,  It,  sir, 
old,  obey,  not,  son,  h6rse ;  use,  finite,  up;  baby;  c  as  in  call,  5  as  in  mice; 
g  as  in  go,  g  as  in  cage ;  ti  as  in  motion ;  obscure  sounds :  a,  g,  i,  o,  u.  Silent 
letters  are  italicized. 


ab'stl  nenqe,  the  act  of  refraining 

from  the  use  of  something, 
ath  iSt'Ic,  strong ;  active. 

bac  te'rl  a,  the  smallest  living  crea- 
tures. 

car'bon  di  ox'Id,  carbonic  acid;  a 

gas. 
car'tl  lage,    an    elastic    tissue; 

gristle, 
cjl'l  a,  hairlike  growths  on  various 

membranes  and  organs  of  the 

body. 
Qir  cu  la'tion,  the  act  of  moving  in 

a  circuit  or  circle, 
con  sump'tion,  a  name  commonly 

given  to  a  disease  of  the  lungs. 

deVmls,  the  second  layer  or  true 
skin. 

6p  I  dem'Ic,  common  to  or  affect- 
ing a  great  number. 


8p  I  der'mis,the  outer  layer  of  skin, 
e  v&p'6  rate,  to  pass  off  in  vapor. 

fer  mSnt',  to  turn  sour  and  boil 
gently. 

gar'bage,  any  worthless,  offensive 

matter, 
gas 'trie,  belonging  or  pertaining 

to  the  stomach. 

In  tox'I  cate,  to  make  drunk. 

m6mrbrane,  a  thin,  soft  tissue  in 
the  form  of  a  sheet  or  layer 
covering  parts  of  the  body. 

mer'cury,  the  column  of  quick- 
silver in  a  thermometer. 

mi'crobe,  the  smallest  living  crea- 
ture that  can  be  seen  only 
through  a  microscope. 

mi'cro  scope,  an  instrument  for  ex- 
amining objects  too  small  for 
the  naked  eye. 


'74 


GOOD  HEALTH 


mo  not '6  nous,  unchanging. 

mu'cous,  slimy. 

mu'cus,  a  thick  fluid  formed  by  the 

mucous  membranes  of  animals,      sa  ll'va,   the  liquid  made  by  the 

glands  and  lining  membrane  of 
oc'ulist,  one  skilled  in  the  treat-  the  mouth. 

ment  of  the  eyes, 
oxyggn,  the  element  of  the  air     thgr  inoin'e  ter,  an   instrument 


rgs'plrator,  an  instrument  used 
as  an  aid  in  breathing. 


that  supports  life. 


which  tells  temperature. 


air. 


per'spi  ra/tion,  the  liquid  poured     vgn'ti  late,  to   supply   with   fresh 
out  on  the  surface  of  the  skin 
by  the  sweat  glands. 

r8s  pi  ra/tion,  the  act  of  breathing. 


vSn'tllator,  a  means  by  which 
tresh  air  is  supplied  to  a  room 
or  building. 


ANNOUNCEMENTS 


THE  GULICK  HYGIENE  SERIES 

By  LUTHER  HALSEY  GULICK,  M.D. 
Recently  Director  of  Physical  Training  in  the  Public  Schools  of  New  York 

Book  I.     GOOD  HEALTH 

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Here,  tucked  away  in  the  lines  of  an  interesting  story,  the  young  reader 
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Book  II.     EMERGENCIES 

I2mo.  Cloth,  xiv  +  173  Pages.  Illustrated.  List  price,  40  cents 
What  to  do  in  case  of  accidents,  and  particularly  how  to  avoid  them, 
is  the  burden  of  this  second  volume.  The  discussion  is  based  upon 
actual  occurrences  which  appeal  to  the  dramatic  instinct  of  the  child, 
and  the  treatment  conforms  to  the  very  latest  and  simplest  methods  of 
prevention  and  alleviation. 

Artificial    respiration,  care   in    crossing  streets,   the   soap-and-water 
treatment  for  ivy  poisoning,  are  suggestive  topics  in  this  helpful  book. 

Book  III.     TOWN  AND  CITY 

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Civic  hygiene  is  here  taught  in  a  most  alluring  manner.  Boys  and  girls 
learn  that  there  are  some  small  responsibilities  that  they  may  shoulder 
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many  other  evils  of  town  and  city  life. 

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bring  out  the  advantages  and  disadvantages  of  bone  and  muscle  habits. 
Muscular  exercise  forms  an  avenue  of  interest  through  which  the  student 
is  taught  all  necessary  knowledge  and  much  that  is  new  concerning  respi 
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Maryland,  Kentucky,  North  Dakota,  South  Dakota,  Oklahoma, 
and  New  Mexico 


Dr.  Allen  prevention  is  a  text  and  the  making  of 
sound  citizens  a  sermon.  In  "  Civics  and  Health  "  he 
sounds  a  slogan  which  should  awaken  every  community  in 
this  country  to  its  opportunities  in  municipal  reform.  Every 
teacher  who  reads  this  book  will  gain  a  new  sense  of  duty 
in  matters  of  hygiene  and  sanitation. 

Civics  and  Health  is  enthrallingly  interesting.  It  is  humanized 
sociology.  Cleaning  up  children  by  scientific  illumination  will  appeal 
to  every  father  and  mother,  every  child  lover  who  has  any  patriotism 
or  desire  to  learn  how  we  as  a  people  are  to  make  moral-reform  agita- 
tions fruitful  through  health  of  American  children,  and  so  establish 
health  of  national  lite.  — Boston  Transcript. 

This  is  one  of  the  books  we  wish  the  law  required  every  citizen  to 
have  in  his  house  and  to  know  by  heart.  Then,  indeed,  mankind  would 
have  made  an  immense  stride  forward.  —  Chicago  Medical  Recorder. 

The  book  is  alive  from  cover  to  cover.  It  breathes  reform,  but  not 
of  the  platform  variety.  It  abounds  in  ugly  facts,  but  superabounds  in 
the  statement  of  best  methods  of  getting  rid  of  this  ugliness.  As 
claimed  by  the  publishers,  it  is  preeminently  a  book  on  "  getting  things 
done."  —  Hygiene  and  Physical  Education,  Springfield,  Mass. 

1 86% 

GINN  AND   COMPANY  PUBLISHERS 


Date  Due 


3*1 34> 


LIBRARY 

COLLEGE    OF    DENTISTRY 
UNIVERSITY    OF  CALIFORNIA 


